Outgoing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told the Des Moines Register “I have concerns about” the fate of the ethanol mandate in the Trump administration, even though Trump campaigned hard in favor of the mandate, derided as a corporate welfare boondoggle by conservatives and environmentalists alike.
“I have concerns about it,” Vilsack told the paper, citing an aggressive effort by the oil industry to kill or wind down federal supports for the fuel made from grain, especially corn. “People who are supportive of the renewable fuel standard should be incredibly vigilant now,” said Vilsack, a former Iowa governor.
The renewable fuel standard is also known as the ethanol mandate. It requires refiners to add ethanol to their gasoline, thus imposing costs on drivers while driving up food prices. Ethanol is widely condemned by environmentalists for tainting groundwater, and the mandate, for obvious reasons, offends free-market conservatives. A few large ethanol processors are the biggest profiteers off this policy and the dozens of other ethanol subsidies and supports on the federal and state level.
Trump campaigned in Iowa in favor of the RFS, but Ted Cruz defied conventional wisdom by running against the ethanol mandate and winning the caucuses. Trump’s appointment of oilmen has the ethanol lobby and its friends like Vilsack worried.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
