An ethanol industry official hopes this week’s USDA-led trade mission to Brazil will convince the country’s leaders to reverse a renewed tariff on ethanol imports.
Growth Energy’s Chris Bliley does not see the Brazil trip with leaders from two-dozen agribusinesses and trade groups as rewarding Brazil for its renewed 20-percent tariff on imported ethanol.
Key players in the ethanol industry, including Chicago’s Lakeview Energy, and Green Plains of Omaha, will be represented on the USDA trade mission. Bliley suggests it’s not as if Brazil is saying ‘no’ to U.S. ethanol.
Brazil, despite the tariff, remains the number one U.S. ethanol export market, with just under 280 million gallons sold there last year, and almost the same in the first half of this year.
But at least ten Senators of both parties have urged U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to press the Brazilians to end the renewed tariff on ethanol imports over a 158-million-gallon annual quota.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.