The Sweet Corruption

How Trump's Coca-Cola Promise Rewards Sugar Barons with Forced Labor Ties

Picture this: the most powerful person in the world takes time from running a country to call a beverage company about their recipe. Donald Trump announced this week that America's most iconic beverage would switch from corn syrup to "real cane sugar" because he asked them to. He thanked the company publicly, like a satisfied customer leaving a good Yelp review.

It sounds like satire. I wish it were.

But here's what happened while Trump was making phone calls about beverage preferences: workers in the Dominican Republic were cutting sugarcane with machetes for $55 a week, trapped in a system designed to ensure they could never leave.

The Human Cost

While you stood in the soda aisle weighing your options, workers in fields you'll never see were discovering they had none. The same moment, different worlds—connected by supply chains we're not supposed to think about.

Imagine owing your boss for the "privilege" of working for them—owing for your ride to work, your place to sleep, even the tools you use. Now imagine you're in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and have no legal rights. That's not employment—that's a cage with a paycheck.

These workers earn approximately $55 per week cutting sugarcane in the Caribbean heat—well below the Dominican Republic's average monthly salary of $777. Multiple workers reported paying recruiters more than they could afford to bring them from Haiti to Central Romana's plantations. Upon arrival, they discovered the job came with invisible shackles: you work until you've paid back recruitment costs, housing fees, tool rental, transportation. The debt never quite disappears.

The workers live in company-controlled settlements called "bateyes." Think company towns, but designed as prisons. Many lack legal status, documentation, or anywhere else to go.

You know what this reminds me of? Nothing. Because we don't have words for systems designed to look like employment while functioning as captivity.

The timeline will make this clearer, but first you need to understand who's playing the game.

The Players and the Timeline

The Fanjul family—Cuban-born brothers Alfonso "Alfy," José "Pepe," Alexander, and Andres—aren't just sugar producers. They're political alchemists who've perfected the art of turning campaign contributions into policy gold. Through their Fanjul Corporation, they own 35% of Central Romana Corporation, the largest sugar producer in the Dominican Republic. While technically a minority stake, 35% ownership means massive corporate influence and enormous profits from any expansion of global sugar markets.

Pepe Fanjul owns a $56 million mansion in Palm Beach, down the street from Mar-a-Lago. When he hosts dinner parties, the guest list reads like a who's who of political power. The Fanjuls have mastered something most of us can only dream of: buying influence across party lines. Alfy bankrolls Democrats, Pepe funds Republicans. No matter who wins, sugar wins.

Now watch what happens when you line up the dates. It's like watching someone pay for express lane access, then act surprised when they skip to the front of the line. Except the "express lane" is American foreign policy, and the people waiting in the regular line are earning $55 a week in the Caribbean heat.

2022: The Biden administration imposed a withhold release order on Central Romana, banning sugar imports after federal investigators documented the warning signs that workers can't leave: abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime.

2024: As Trump's presidential campaign ramped up, Fanjul Corp. made strategic investments in his political future. $1 million to Trump's Make America Great Again PAC. $413,000 to the Republican National Committee. Pepe Fanjul co-hosted a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, demonstrating the family's intimate access to Trump's inner circle.

Early 2025: Within months of taking office, the Trump administration quietly rescinded the forced labor ban on Central Romana. They chose secrecy over transparency in a decision that directly benefited major donors. The ban was lifted despite labor rights groups stating that working conditions had not significantly improved.

July 2025: Trump announced that Coca-Cola would switch to cane sugar in a personal phone call he publicized on social media, crediting his direct conversations with company executives rather than any policy process.

You're looking at $1.4 million transformed into potentially billions in new sugar market access. But I keep coming back to something else: the workers are still there, still cutting cane, still earning $55 a week.

This isn't just about labor exploitation. It's about what happens when any threat to elite power arises—whether it's economic justice or sexual accountability. Watch how the playbook repeats itself.

The Protection Pattern

This isn't an isolated favor. It's a pattern of protecting power by suppressing accountability—a pattern chillingly familiar from the Epstein cover-up.

Look at the parallel actions:

Action 1 (Sugar): Rescinding a documented forced labor ban benefiting a major donor despite federal evidence of worker exploitation.

Action 2 (Epstein): Actively blocking the release of Epstein files after promising transparency during his campaign, with Attorney General Pam Bondi's contradictory statements—first claiming the files were "sitting on my desk," then months later announcing there was no client list at all.

The same administration that moved with lightning speed to lift sanctions for its donors suddenly developed institutional amnesia when confronted with demands for transparency about a network of wealthy abusers. The mechanism is identical: use political power to bury evidence and shield influential networks from consequences. Whether it's forced labor or sexual abuse, the currency is power, and the cost is borne by the voiceless.

Both Bill Clinton and Pepe Fanjul appeared in Jeffrey Epstein's notorious "black book"—evidence of proximity within elite circles where such protectionism is normalized. But the real story isn't who knew whom. It's how the machinery of protection operates: when accountability threatens the network, political power intervenes to make the problem disappear.

Workers trapped in bateyes. Victims seeking justice from Epstein's enablers. Both are silenced by the same machinery protecting the powerful.

What Fairness Looks Like

In a world where fairness wasn't just a marketing slogan, here's what would happen: Workers cutting cane would earn living wages. They'd have the right to leave if they wanted. They wouldn't owe money for the privilege of working. Their housing wouldn't be controlled by their employer.

I've seen glimpses of what genuine accountability looks like, and it makes the current arrangement seem even more deliberately cruel. It's not complicated—just expensive for the people who benefit from things as they are.

But we're not living in that world. We're living in one where presidential phone calls determine beverage ingredients while workers who can't afford to quit keep cutting cane in the heat.

The Health Theater

This case goes beyond typical Washington influence peddling—it involves rewarding documented worker exploitation with policy favors. While campaign contributions buying access is unfortunately common, using political donations to overturn federal findings of forced labor crosses into more dangerous territory.

The timing reveals awareness of the problematic optics. Trump frames the Coca-Cola announcement as part of his "Make America Healthy Again" initiative. Here's what he's not telling you: nutritionally, cane sugar and corn syrup are nearly identical. Both will spike your blood sugar, both contribute to diabetes, both taste sweet in your mouth while someone else pays the bitter price. The "health" framing is marketing, not medicine.

If Trump genuinely cared about American health, he'd promote reducing sugar consumption overall. Instead, he's switching between equally harmful sweeteners that happen to benefit his donors. Imagine treating a bullet wound with different colored bandages while insisting you're practicing medicine.

This isn't about what goes in your Coke. It's about who gets to decide—and what they get in return for deciding.

The Next Sip

The next time you hold a Coca-Cola—assuming they actually make this switch—the sugar that sweetens it will carry the taste of everything you now know. Fifty-five dollars a week. Debt bondage in the Caribbean heat. A president's phone call to change a recipe. Campaign contributions that buy silence about forced labor. Epstein files that vanish like morning mist.

The Fanjuls turned $1.4 million into potentially billions. Workers who cut that cane are still there, still trapped, still earning less in a week than you might spend on lunch.

Every sip will taste different now. The sweetness will carry the salt of someone else's sweat, the bitterness of someone else's debt, the weight of a system that grinds people into powder so the powerful can call it sugar.

But here's the truth about knowing: we're experts at forgetting what we can't bear to remember. You'll read this, feel the weight of it, maybe even share it with friends. Then you'll reach for that familiar red can in a week, a month, and for just a moment you'll hesitate. You'll remember the workers, the $55 a week, the phone calls between presidents and soda companies.

And then you'll drink it anyway.

Because that's what we do. We compartmentalize. We rationalize. We tell ourselves one person can't change anything, that our small choices don't matter, that someone else will handle the hard problems. We perfect the art of selective blindness, of necessary amnesia.

The system counts on this. It banks on our infinite capacity to swallow what we know is wrong, to sugar-coat our complicity until it goes down smooth. They don't need to silence us—we silence ourselves.

But maybe, just maybe, some tastes linger longer than others. Maybe the salt won't wash out. Maybe knowing ruins the sweetness just enough to make you reach for something else.