Comment by r_smart

Maybe you have a lot of information that I don't (I'm hardly an expert here), but describing it as the main driver seems like a stretch. In the Caribbean, I can see your statement being true. But in the US, as I understand it, it was more general agriculture / cotton. And so far as I know, a huge proportion of slaves were sold into the Middle East, and I assume they didn't have a huge sugar trade there.