Hah, Hah, Hah...They Think Trump Is A Republican
That's so cute.
Trump, who has rarely held a position that he didn't once hold the other side on, is a crony capitalist ME! ME! ME!-publican and/or a ME! ME! ME!-ocrat, depending on who's listening and what his whim happens to be at a particular moment.
Adorably, we've got a free-market think tank dude who seems a little confused about this.
Rob Nikolewski writes in the SD Union Trib that ethanol is still clinging to life, thanks to Trump. In fact, ethanol should be perking up quite nicely at the news -- a letter the President sent to the Renewable Fuels Association:
"I have something to read," Bob Dinneen, chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, said Tuesday to the crowd at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, before he recited a letter from Trump."Rest assured that your president and this administration value the importance of renewable fuels to America's economy and to our energy independence," Trump's letter said. "As I emphasized throughout my campaign, renewable fuels are essential to America's energy strategy."
Trump went on to call ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) important to rural economies and said his administration was looking to reform regulations that "impede growth, increase consumer costs and eliminate good-paying jobs."
It was welcome news for ethanol producers but a setback for critics of the RFS, the federal program that requires billions of gallons of biofuels be mixed into the fuel tanks of American drivers.
"I thought if anyone would be the one to do it, it would be a Republican in power and now it appears, no," said Robert Bryce, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a free-market think-tank. "Unfortunately, Trump has decided he's going to continue along one of the longest-running ripoffs of the American taxpayers in this country's history."
From Reason TV:
Ethanol, especially the corn-based variety, is bad for taxpayers, bad for consumers, bad for the environment, and horrible for the world's poor. In fact, even environmentalists are critical of ethanol subsidies these days. The ethanol craze has distorted markets and increased the price of food worldwide. The only people who still support ethanol subsidies are the ethanol producers-and politicians from both sides of the aisle. Together, they make sure the subsidies keep coming.
via @Mark_J_Perry
Do not dismiss the properties of ethanol. It represents a 50% cut in mileage, as it only contains 2/3 the specific heat of gasoline. Also, biofuels CANNOT make anywhere near the volume drilling does.
Now, as to a President: if you want him to have the executive power to halt the subsidies, say so. If you didn't raise this issue for the previous three Presidents, I don't suppose I can tell you that this one doesn't deserve any special bile for this now. If he went in with an axe, could I have counted on you to cheer? I don't think so.
Radwaste at February 22, 2017 11:24 PM
You really only need to use the searchiepoo thingie.
Amy on ditching ethanol subsidies during the Obama administration:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/01/03/one_form_of_the.html
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2017 11:35 PM
All true. And the more one knows about the specifics of these dynamics, the worse it gets.
I've been an ethanol foe for a very long time, and when Trump endorsed ethanol I was shocked. My best guess at the time was that it was something he felt he needed to say to have a good showing in the Iowa primary. Perhaps he felt that in view of the congressional support it enjoys ethanol is a fait accompli for the time being, so it doesn't much matter what he personally thinks about it. And no leader purposely kicks every single sleeping dog, at least not all at the same time... it's important to prioritize.
Because Trump is willing to tackle issues that are much more politically difficult than ethanol, I think there's a possibility he will eventually allow his EPA to lead the charge toward killing it - preceded by an information campaign to sell the broader public on its evils. That will give squishy congressional Republicans cover.
Trump has an excellent grasp of the bedrock mechanics of practical policy, and I find it impossible to picture he actually believes ethanol to be a good thing, or he is ignorant of its evils.
Lastango at February 23, 2017 12:11 AM
> Amy on ditching ethanol
> subsidies...
Go Big Red. Go Big Red. G
Crid at February 23, 2017 2:42 AM
20-odd years ago, I wrote columns for a major US farming magazine, in the online edition. It's not exactly news that I can sometimes be a little bit contrarian. But corn-based ethanol was the only subject about which I got actual death wishes - as in, you deserve to die for presenting the facts about the product that feeds my family. Nothing prevents a man from seeing that something is false so much as the fact that his livelihood, and the livelihood of everybody he knows, depends upon that something being true. The scam that is corn-based ethanol has penetrated some small parts of the nation to the extent that it amounts to a quasi-religious belief system, and no amount of factual data can upset it.
If it was only that, it would just be an interesting curiosity, like the Amish or the Shakers. But the unfortunate thing is that one of those small parts of the nation is the corn-growing state of Iowa, home of the Iowa caucuses and a key step in the road to the Presidency, and so lawmakers of every party have fallen over themselves to throw money, subsidies and laws at the good voters of Iowa, all meant to prop up this laughable scam for just a little longer. They've been doing this for 40 years now, because it works. It's made Cargill and ADM very rich indeed, and the rest of the nation has paid for it in higher fuel and food prices, and in the uncountable tax dollars that have been thrown at this losing mess.
It is the exact-sort of Washington-typical pork-barrel outrage that President Trump promised he would go to Washington to end. He promised to 'drain the swamp', and corn-based ethanol is one of the deepest and muckiest places in that swamp. When he came out in favor of corn-based ethanol during the Iowa caucuses, I knew at once that he was either a complete ignoramus or just another vote whore - his current support of the RFA just cements my opinion, with just a slight nudge closer to 'complete ignoramus', since he no longer has any need to be a vote whore.
llater,
llamas
llamas at February 23, 2017 3:30 AM
☑ llamas at February 23, 2017 3:30 AM
Crid at February 23, 2017 6:54 AM
It's funny, because from reading the complaints, you'd think Iowa would dry up and blow away without ethanol subsidies. Yet, if my memory does not deceive me, Iowa farmers were growing corn, and doing so successfully, before those subsidies existed. Hmm.
Ethanol does have one outstanding virtue: it significantly improves a fuel's octane rating. Higher octane means you can build engines with higher compression ratios. Higher compression == more efficient. Of course, there are other ways of blending gasoline to have higher octane ratings. Right now they are more expensive (have you ever looked at how much aviation and racing gasolines cost?), but I'm sure that that's at least partly because those other methods aren't subsidized. I don't have a good feel for how ethanol-blended fuels would price out in a free market vs. non-ethanol fuels of the same octane rating.
This is where I have to give some props to Bill Clinton. As President, he worked towards ending the madness of farm subsidies. Unfortunately, GW Bush reversed that policy, and Obama doubled down on Bush's policy, and here we are.
Cousin Dave at February 23, 2017 7:17 AM
Pandering to Iowa has a long bi-partisan history and is quite "Republican". Personally, my baseline for Trump is typical pandering politician with a splash of populism. My bar is already set pretty low with Trump (think Peter Dinkelage at the gym low). That way if Trump can actually make good on a promise I like, say his promise to remove 2 regulations for every new regulation proposed, I will be pleasantly surprised. Not sure how this perspective would work for you, Amy, but that is my plan to ride out the Trump presidency.
Shtetl G at February 23, 2017 7:28 AM
Cousin Dave wrote:
'I don't have a good feel for how ethanol-blended fuels would price out in a free market vs. non-ethanol fuels of the same octane rating.'
I do.
Current rack prices (before taxes) are about the same for 100% 87-octane gasoline and 100% fuel ethanol.
But 100% fuel ethanol has only about 65% of the energy content of the 87-octane gasoline - so you need 1 1/2 times as much ethanol by volume as you do of gasoline to get the same amount of work out of it.
And getting that ethanol at that rack price reflects a mass of subsidies and tax breaks that went into its production, from growing the corn, to building and operating the plant that made it.
When it leaves the rack, the ethanol benefits from a further round of tax breaks, both Federal and State (varies by state) which further serve to artificially reduce the price at the pump - but not the price the customer pays, since all of those tax breaks come out of the taxpayer's pocket. Add to that the increase in food costs that every consumer pays because of the artificial pressures that corn ethanol puts on the corn market, and it all adds up to a pretty bad deal.
Fuel pricing is volatile and it's hard to be accurate, but my shirtcuff math says that the true cost, today, to the consumer of 10% ethanol-blended gasoline is between $2 and $2.50 a gallon. That does not take into account the environmental impacts.
No other nation on earth indulges itself in this stupidity. If the numbers don't convince you, then try this thought experiment - if ethanol is such a great auto fuel, why have we had to be forced by law to buy and use it for the last 40 years?
llater,
llamas
llamas at February 23, 2017 8:06 AM
I like the part where Hillary isn't pertinent.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 23, 2017 8:42 AM
I like the part where Hillary isn't pertinent.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 23, 2017 8:42 AM
Me too Gog. The alternative was never a null set.
Isab at February 23, 2017 8:45 AM
"You really only need to use the searchiepoo thingie."
Umm, yes, and I was the first commenter there. 2012 may be 5 years back, but it's not at the front of the line about or against ethanol subsidies. Nor does it address a common paradox when speaking of any President: some want him to have the power to "fix" their pet peeve, but no power at all on other issues just like it.
Radwaste at February 23, 2017 8:50 AM
"Current rack prices (before taxes) are about the same for 100% 87-octane gasoline and 100% fuel ethanol.
But 100% fuel ethanol has only about 65% of the energy content of the 87-octane gasoline - so you need 1 1/2 times as much ethanol by volume as you do of gasoline to get the same amount of work out of it."
Do the math on that assuming fuel is only 10 percent ethanol and this data comes from a laboratory and not real world driving.
Ran an experiment once driving cross country. I do it every year in a 99 GMC Sierra 1500 pulling a 6000 lb. trailer.
So crossing the same terrain at the same speed and charting my gas milage was easy.
Result of this quasi scientific experiment? In real life conditions it made not one damn bit of difference to my gas milage whether I used real gas or the ten percent ethenol stuff.
I still would like them to get rid of the subsidy, but I would like the peanut cartel and the sugar cartel and the doctor, hospital, Pharma cartels to be defunded as well.
Like shtetl G I am hoping for a few small changes. I don't expect a libertarian revolution.
Isab at February 23, 2017 9:02 AM
@ Isab - you are quite right and I apologize if I did not do the math you wanted me to do. As you say, fuel consumption using 10%-ethanol-gasoline (E10) vs 100%-gasoline-gasoline is likely going to be identical, at least to the level that you can measure it in real-world driving.
Now try it in a vehicle using 85%-ethanol gasoline (E85) vs 100%-gasoline-gasoline - most late-model vehicles can use E85 - and let us know how you get on. I've seen tests like this done - you'll get just-about what the science tells you you will get, which is about 65% of the fuel economy you would get with 100%-gasoline-gasoline. Put another way, for a given journey, you'll need about half-as-much E85 again by volume as you would 100% gasoline. Now consider that E85 typically runs 80-85% of the cost of 100% gasoline, factor in that it is Federally taxed at only 15% of the amount that 100% gasoline is taxed, and I think that the case makes itself - ethanol as auto fuel is overpriced at the pump by a large margin, and then hits the consumer again with increased taxes and increased food costs. It's just a stupid, wasteful idea on so many levels, which is probably why the Congress loves it so much and it may never die. It's exactly the sort of naked pork-barrel greed and corruption that President Trump promised he would put a stop to - and yet here we stand.
llater,
llamas
llamas at February 23, 2017 9:52 AM
Llamas, thanks for the info. So let's do some math... E10 regular (87 octane) I did some Web searching to find some tax rates. The combined state and federal motor fuel excise tax for Alabama appears to be 42.3 cents, give a take a few depending on which source you look at. The county adds a 3 cents/gal tax, and the city 1 cent. So that's a total of 46.3 cents. Taking that out of the pump price, and guesstimating 7 cents/gal for profit margin, it looks like the (subsidized) wholesale price to the station is around $1.48. So if we take the most favorable-to-E10 assumption from your true-cost estimated range and call it $2.00, the E10 is being subsidized at about 52 cents per gallon, right around 25% of the retail price.
There are a few stations here that carry a non-ethanol 87 octane regular. I went by one the other day and they had it posted at $2.27. Since the non-subsidized cost of the E10 should be, per the above, $2.57, it looks like in a free market, the non-ethanol regular would cost 30 cents per gallon less. That's interesting to me... I would have thought that the E10 would price at least in the same ballpark as the non-ethanol, but it looks like it really doesn't.
Cousin Dave at February 23, 2017 10:15 AM
. It's exactly the sort of naked pork-barrel greed and corruption that President Trump promised he would put a stop to - and yet here we stand.
llater,
llamas
llamas at February 23, 2017 9:52 AM
It is, but it wasnt done by executive order. It was implemented by congressional action, as so much of the pork barrel spending always is.
I have more hope than you do, that at some point a lot of the useless subsidies will be slowly dismanteled.
I didnt vote for a revolution. I just voted against doubling down on the Democratic party's vision for this country.
Shit like this shoud be getting a lot more attention.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/us/alcohol-tobacco-firearms-cigarettes-millions-secret-bank-account.html
Isab at February 23, 2017 10:20 AM
Also, regarding the E85, I think that in real-world conditions an engine designed to run on E8 5 could do a bit better than that, because you could design it for higher compression. IIRC pure ethanol rates at about 115 research octane. You could design an engine to run that at 14:1 compression and it would have an efficiency gain over a 9:1 gasoline engine. (Indycar engines run E95 with compression ratios in the 18:1 range.) I'm guessing it could gain about 10 percentage points vs. the theoretical ratio.
None of this invalidates your basic point, though: in terms of joules/$, the non-ethanol gasoline still comes out ahead. And of course ethanol has real-world problems, like being corrosive, and difficult to start in cold weather.
Cousin Dave at February 23, 2017 10:24 AM
And to riff on what Isab said: Since the 1930s, farm subsidies have enjoyed bipartisan support. It seems to be only us libertarians and free-traders who worry about it. Every once and a while you'll hear a farmer grouse about some of the absurdities in the system (e.g., the old jokes about "what crop are you not planting this year?"), but that doesn't usually motivate them to support changes.
Cousin Dave at February 23, 2017 10:27 AM
@ Cousin Dave - your fuel math looks about right. If you Google 'rack rates', you can find out what the rack price is in your area, I think you will find that it is right around $1.50.
Yes, if you design an engine to run exclusively on E85, you could up the CR and do some interesting stuff with fuel ratios and timing as well, and you could likely get several % more efficiency out of it. As the NASCAR boys do. But you can't really do that for mass-market vehicles. Two reasons:
- US agriculture cannot possibly supply enough ethanol to make E85 universal. I did the math once, several years ago, and you would need something like 4 more complete Iowas, with every acre plowed to corn and yielding at > 100 bu/acre, to make this work.
So you have to design your engines to run on both.
- higher-compression engines are heavier, and they demand more of all sorts of parameters. And CAFE standards are such that the law is essentially forcing cars to be lighter. Not heavier.
If you wanted to go down that road, the answer is diesel - the added weight of the engine is more-than-offset by the efficiency increase. That's the route that Europe has gone, with stunning success - even without cheating :-). But the moronic tree-huggers at EPA have regulated passenger-car diesel in the US to the point that there's no point - another area where President Trump could make real progress, but he won't.
Regarding building engines for E85 and better, there's a corollary - you could just-as-well optimize your engine to run on 100%-gasoline-gasoline (using petroleum-based octane enhancers like MTBE) and likely obtain efficiency improvements just as good as you could with E85 - the difference being that you would not have to spend uncountable amounts of money growing corn and subsidizing the manufacture of ethanol. Ethanol is not the only octane-enhancer out there, and making it from corn may be the dumbest and most-costly way to make an octane enhancer that there is.
llater,
llamas
llamas at February 23, 2017 10:54 AM
I'm not surprised by this. If you've paid attention to Trump it fits his character unfortunately. But as Gog points out, he was better than the alternative.
Don't you end up with more nitrous oxides and other short lived pollutants when you increase compression ratios? I thought the EPA won't let you do that without some advance in pollution control technology.
Ben at February 23, 2017 2:22 PM
As others have said; Trump is NOT Hillary! Amen.
charles at February 23, 2017 5:10 PM
As I recall, Trump has supported ethanol practically from the beginning of his campaign. This is one aspect he should lose. I don't want my lawnmower or snow blower to be eaten up by my gasoline.
mpetrie98 at February 23, 2017 8:28 PM
Yeah, the flex-fuel engines are a dead end. Too many design compromises have to be made, and you wind up with an engine that isn't very good at doing either thing.
I'm working on an DoD project right now where we deal with small heavy-fuel diesel engines. There's been a ton of progress, and the engines are much lighter and more efficient than they used to be. We ran into a problem a few years ago when a leading company in this area was acquired by a Chinese company, and the DoD had to cut them off and get other suppliers. It's taken a while for other competitors to pick up the slack, and they are still dealing with some gremlins.
Cousin Dave at February 24, 2017 6:40 AM
The only people who think Trump is a Republican are Democrats.
Most of the people who voted for him did so for one of two reasons. a) He wasn't Hillary and b) he represented something outside of Washington. For those who are frustrated with Washington and want the administrative state dealt a crippling blow, Trump was an ideal monkey wrench to be thrown into the works.
Republicans, for all their rhetoric, weren't going to dismantle the administrative state. They've had years to do so and have not, as Amy's ethanol example shows.
Since the 4th Circuit Court just dismantled the Supreme Court's Heller ruling and decided that "military use" is a criterion on which gun control can legally be based, Trump's choice of Gorush for SCOTUS has justified their vote for him.
And considering that 9 out of the 13 circuit courts are now dominated by Obama-appointed liberal judges, voting for Trump was, for them, a matter of national survival, not of partisan politics.
Conan the Grammarian at February 24, 2017 7:50 AM
Maybe my memory's slipping, Conan, but why, then, didn't Trump run as a Democrat? It's not as though he had much doubt as to his ability to win...
lenona at February 24, 2017 10:40 AM
Trump ran with the party most likely to give him a victory. Hillary was the Democrat's choice and she had the party nomination, via the Super Delegates, locked up.
The Dems are far left internationalists. Trump, at heart, is an American nationalist. Very few of those left in the Democratic Party, but it's a message that appeals to enough Repubs to give him a fighting chance there.
If he'd thought he stood a chance as a Democrat, he'd have run as one. Running for the Republican nomination doesn't make him a Republican. He's an opportunist.
Conan the Grammarian at February 24, 2017 11:55 AM
Besides, Trump's not a Democrat either.
Conan the Grammarian at February 26, 2017 7:08 AM
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