Questions About Ethanol Imports and Tariffs
Ethanol imports and the Brazilian tariff made up the majority of questions from the media during the “Truth About Ethanol” press conference Tuesday. Why do we need to import any ethanol if the industry can meet the demand? How much ethanol will we import this year? What about a temporary waiver of the Brazilian import tariff? What are the secondary tariffs on ethanol? How does the Brazilian tariff fit into the WTO negotiations and is it vulnerable to a challenge? Do you expect an unsuccessful effort to repeal the tariff and by who? Obviously this is an issue that the media believes is important. RFA president Bob Dinneen did a very good job of explaining the entire tariff structure for ethanol in response to one question. What I found interesting was that because ethanol can enter the US duty free from a number of countries – such as those in the Caribbean Basin Initiative – Brazilian ethanol can basically circumvent the secondary tariff by going through another country. Listen to Dinneen’s entire explanation here.
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Domestic Fuel » Archives » Answering the Critics
[...] During the “Truth about Ethanol” conference call last week (see previous post), I got to ask the guys to answer the critics who charge that ethanol and corn production rely too heavily on natural gas and nitrogen fertilizer. Basically, Bob Dinneen of Renewable Fuels Association, notes that the ethanol industry continues to evolve, “$11 natural gas is a great motivator to look at other technologies,” such as biomass gasification and methane digestors. “Our industry is unrecognizable from what it was five years ago, it will be unrecognizable again five years from now.” Jon Doggett with the National Corn Growers Association says farmers are using precision farming and precision fertilizer application, “we are producing the same units of corn with a third less fertilizer than we did seven years ago,” and seed companies are working on corn plants that use significantly less nitrogen than those being grown today. The reporter after me asked the same question, so here is the complete Q and A on that topic. (2:20) Read more on Ethanol [...]
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