First, and ugliest, is the tariff on imported sugar. At this time, this amounts to about 60% of the price of sugar worldwide. You can confirm this figure by checking the closing prices of Sugar #11 (''world'' sugar) and Sugar #14 (''domestic'' sugar) on the NYBOT any business day.
This tariff is and has been indefensible for decades. It exists for one reason: the domestic sugar lobby, whose profits are so high (for a simple commodity-based business) that they can afford to and regularly do buy off the Regress, wholesale, so much a head with a cash discount. It serves no economic purpose whatever; sugar is hardly an indeustry needing ''protection''.
Secondly, one cannot discuss ethanol today w/o noting carefully that there is a sizeable tariff on imported ethanol, too, some 50-odd cents/gallon. Couple this with the blending subsidy, the other farm ''support'' largesse, and the sugar tariff, and in reality there are at least four different subsidies for corn-based ethanol in the US.
Remove these subsidies and absolutely nobody would use ethanol as a motor fuel -- and I don't give the tiniest tinker's damn how much high-value animal feed is produced as a byproduct of wet milling. We already have lots of animal feed, more than we can use in fact, so who gives a rip about the byproducts, eh?
The ethanol scam isn't about energy, or energy-independence (haha), or anything other than one thing: money. Boatloads of money. Your money. My money. Every taxpayer's money.
You are one of the few writers I've seen who correctly charactierises ''ethanol'' as being both about corn AND sugar. The problem is, sadly, that ADM almost never loses in D.C., and the sugar lobby NEVER loses. Put these two groups of pirates together in a cause, any cause, and it's a done deal.
More's the pity. But, it's typical; when government attempts to pick winners in the economic sphere, everyone -- I mean absolutely everyone -- other than ''the chosen'', gets screwed royally.
BOHICA, m'friend, but FReegards nonetheless.
Bump