Chuck Grassley: ‘No deal’ with Trump on ethanol after hour-long meeting

“Same discussion again,” the Iowa Republican tweeted after the meeting. “No deal made.”

Trump was acting more as a mediator between two Republican camps on Tuesday. On one side, there is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, representing oil refiners’ complaints about the Renewable Fuel Standard. The refiners argue that the ethanol mandate is costing them through the hefty sums they have to pay for ethanol credits, or RINs, to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for renewable fuel.

On the other side is the ethanol camp, represented by Republican Sens. Grassley and Joni Ernst from Iowa, which supports keeping the current system under the RFS intact.

Cruz promised a “win-win” deal for both refiners and ethanol producers in a major speech he gave last week in Philadelphia. He said he would work with the EPA to create a program to cap the price of RINs to ensure the high cost of the credits are no long a burden on refiners’ operations and jobs.

He made the speech from the largest refinery on the East Coast, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month because of the hundred of millions of dollars it had to pay for RINs last year. Cruz was accompanied on Tuesday at the White House by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who is backing a RIN fix.

But Grassley was not convinced. Grassley said the RFS program’s design would be “destroyed” by Cruz’s “RIN cap/waiver,” he added in a tweet. He said it was not the “win win” that Cruz promised, and instead would “destroy ethanol demand,” making any deal “useless.”

Ahead of the White House meeting, Bill Northey of Iowa was confirmed to be undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture. Cruz had placed a hold on Northey to force Grassley to the table.

“It took too long,” Grassley tweeted. “You were used as an innocent tool btwn big oil & ethanol. All the farmers of the United States will now benefit from you like Iowa farmers have for 11 yrs.”

Meanwhile, Republican Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is hard at work drafting a bill to address the RFS concerns. However, his office is being tight lipped about the details of what it will contain.

“He’s working hard to unify all stakeholders in a consensus effort to reform the Renewable Fuel Standard,” a Cornyn aide told the Washington Examiner.

“The legislation is still being drafted,” but there are no announcements about a timeline on its release, according to the aide.