"importation" news and stories

Today's Wall Street Journal featured a front-page article about the demand for Mexican-made Coca Cola in the U.S. Mexican Coke is made with cane sugar, unlike American Coke, which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. While some soda aficionados like Mexican Coke for its supposedly cleaner taste and better mouth feel, its main market in the U.S. is to Mexican immigrants. While Coca Cola authorizes several bottlers to distribute its products in Mexico, the company is continually trying to stop the importation of those soft drinks into the U.S. for fear that they'll compete with the sodas bottled here. Since the bottles aren't actually counterfeit, they're still legal to import. The results are slightly covert networks of distributors that import Mexican Coke to the U.S. and then distribute it throughout the country. The WSJ traces a few bottles from Mexico to Georgia.