Farmers hit hard by Trump's ethananol exemptions

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

'Your EPA went too far': Farmers hit hard by Trump EPA's new ethanol rules are fuming

"Farmer tensions are running pretty tight out here right now,” Duane Aistrope, a corn and soybean farmer in Randolph, Iowa — roughly two hours southwest of Des Moines — told NBC News. "We got him elected out here in the Midwest — the farmers did."

The Midwest agricultural industry is up in arms not only due to the president's trade war, but because the Environmental Protection Agency recently exempted 31 small oil refineries from rules that would require them to blend ethanol, which comes from corn, into their fuel supply. Those exemptions are now forcing farmers to grapple with lost revenue from wasted crops.

However, since Trump took office, his EPA has issued 85 exemptions to oil refineries to stop blending ethanol in their fuel — a staggering increase from previous administrations. The waivers have extended to giant oil corporations such as Chevron and Exxon. As a result, more than one dozen ethanol plants have shut down or halted production across the country this year.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Oh well, maybe he'll do better in his second term. Gotta keep those illegals out.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Forgive me if I'm wrong or if my info is outdated but ethanol blending is actually not a good policy no? As of about a decade ago (when I took college classes on this type of stuff) it tended to make fuel less efficient and actually require more oil consumption to get the same output of power.

Incentivising thousands of farmers producing ethanol for this purpose is... unwise. Maybe it's a good policy for offloading excess corn production that can't be shipped due to the trade war but it's a bad long-term strategy.

[Sir Mohamed]

I'm tired of winning.

[GP270watch]

Ethanol is problematic, it's essentially a welfare program for farmers. It's a "biofuel" that's not really green.

 I don't think Trump is easing restrictions because it's the right policy choice environmentally. He's simply reducing regulations on oil and gas companies. He's also removing the methane detection and collection regulations, something that makes no damn sense.

 Given the 1-2 punch of trade war and deemphasizing ethanol, the Farmers probably don't care why Trump admin is doing it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Forgive me if I'm wrong or if my info is outdated but ethanol blending is actually not a good policy no? As of about a decade ago (when I took college classes on this type of stuff) it tended to make fuel less efficient and actually require more oil consumption to get the same output of power.

Ethanol is less caloric than octane, so ethanol-blended gasoline is less fuel efficient than the same volume of pure gasoline, but ethanol doesn't impair the fuel value of the gasoline it is added to.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I struggle to think of an environmental policy implemented in a non-communist country that has as much negative consequences as America's obsession with artificially bolstering corn sales for the sake of biofuels. If anything, the corn belt monoculture needs to go away, or you're going to have continued degradation of the environment and local recessions with the prices of corn and soy beans.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There's no such thing as "ethananol"

[Tintrlvr]

Forgive me if I'm wrong or if my info is outdated but ethanol blending is actually not a good policy no? As of about a decade ago (when I took college classes on this type of stuff) it tended to make fuel less efficient and actually require more oil consumption to get the same output of power.

Incentivising thousands of farmers producing ethanol for this purpose is... unwise. Maybe it's a good policy for offloading excess corn production that can't be shipped due to the trade war but it's a bad long-term strategy.

You're totally right, ethanol blending is bad policy for anything other than subsidizing farmers. This is one of the few areas where honestly the Republicans have been better than the Democrats; ethanol blending and ethanol subsidies generally were a big reason why Obama blew McCain out of the water in Iowa in 2008, because McCain publicly came out in favor of eliminating ethanol subsidies and ending ethanol mixing while Obama was an advocate. But it's still interesting and potentially politically relevant that Trump is annoying his voters by removing their subsidies.