EVERYTHING WE LIKE GOES AWAY. The New England Confectionery Company is owner of Stark Candy, the manufacturer of those Valentine candy hearts that until recently were made in Pewaukee.

The firm has plenty of capacity at a 5-year-old plant in Revere, Mass., that is much larger than the 64,000-square-foot Pewaukee factory, said Bill Leva, NECCO's vice president of operations.

Further, Leva said, NECCO has faced stiff competition from foreign candy producers, thanks to federal subsidies of domestic sugar growers and tight quotas on imports.

That has protected U.S. sugar growers, but kept prices here at double the global level or more, a 2006 Commerce Department report said.

As a result, according to the agency, many U.S. makers of sugar-containing products such as candy have closed or relocated to Canada or Mexico. Imports of products containing sugar, meanwhile, have soared.

"It's been very hard to compete," Leva said. Smaller operations like the Pewaukee plant are "just getting knocked out," he said.

Support your right to keep cane farms in Hawaii and water-mining beet farms in the High Plains of eastern Colorado in business! Candies, on the other hand, are manufactured goods that cross borders without tariff under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Your tax dollars subsidize the export of sugar.