Your sugar example is not a good example because the US setup a mandate to be totally food supply independent after the Dust Bowl/famine in the early part of the last century.
So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.
Sorry, I didn’t realize it was an opinion piece. I had just remembered reading multiple times that sugar tariffs were implemented to enrich domestic sugar producers. This seems like a better analysis:
So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.