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National & World Ag News Headlines |
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President Trump to Announce New Biofuel Policy Soon
USAgNet - 08/29/2019
President Donald Trump will announce a plan to boost demand for biofuels, which farmers and producers say has suffered from waivers the administration has issued exempting oil refiners from requirements to blend ethanol into the U.S. fuel supply, Secretary of
Agriculture Sonny Perdue said. The Trump administration has scrambled Cabinet members for several weeks now to churn out a plan that would quell an uproar among American farmers after the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision to grant 31
biofuel waivers to small oil refineries.
According to Reuters, Perdue was speaking at an agriculture policy forum as part of the Illinois Farm Progress Show. He did not provide a timeline for when the president would make the announcement.
"This is news the president wants to deliver..over the mitigation" of small refinery exemptions, Perdue said.
He added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has presented proposals on strengthening infrastructure to allow more widespread use of E15, a higher ethanol blend of gasoline.
The tug of war between rivaling oil and corn industries is a growing headache for Trump, who struggles to appease these two crucial constituencies as he eyes re-election in 2020. Throughout his 2016 campaign that brought him to power, Trump championed
ethanol but also courted the oil industry.
American farmers have born the brunt of Trump's trade war with China and he has rolled out around $30 billion in aid package to offset their losses to ensure this key voter base stays loyal to him.
Last week Trump summoned Perdue and EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and a few White House advisors to come up with a solution that will boost biofuel demand. Among the proposals circulated was to ramp up biofuel blending quotas to account for the
waived volumes but there has been disagreement over when to start it, this year or the next, sources said.
Any redistribution of waived volumes or lifting of the annual biofuel mandates will upset the oil industry, which dismisses farmers' argument that waivers hurt ethanol demand, Reuters reports.
Perdue also said he held a meeting with Wheeler and Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Wednesday over the blend wall, which is the maximum amount of ethanol that can be blended into gasoline.
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