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Northeast Louisiana | Thought this might be of interest to some of you about Brazil and ethanol. Might want to make sure you congressman opposes lifting import tarriffs on Ethanol.
Saturday March 31, 3:28 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The backdrop is different but the issues are the same for President Bush's meeting with the president of Brazil, their second in less than a month.
Trade and ethanol topped Bush's meeting three weeks ago with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in crowded Sao Paulo, Bush's first stop on his five-nation tour of Latin America. They will be the top two issues again when the two meet Saturday at the secluded Camp David presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland.
Silva, the first Latin American leader Bush has hosted at Camp David, hopes to advance a biofuels alliance and help break a deadlock in world trade talks known as the Doha Round.
The talks, named for the city in Qatar where they were launched in 2001, stalled last year because developing countries were upset by rich nations' refusal to significantly cut farm subsidies and by wealthy nations' demand for greater access to markets in the developing world.
No major breakthrough on those talks is expected at Camp David.
"It's going to take more countries than just the United States and Brazil," Dan Fisk, the National Security Council's senior director of Western Hemisphere affairs, said Friday. "What the two presidents want to review is where we are and what needs to be done and what President Bush and President Lula can do to move forward."
The two leaders' talks on ethanol will follow up a memorandum of understanding to promote international ethanol that the two nations signed when Bush visited Brazil on March 9. Fisk said the two hoped to announce a handful of Caribbean and Central American nations that will be the beneficiaries of pilot programs for biofuels development.
But Silva on Friday reiterated Brazil's position that the alternative fuel will not gain traction worldwide unless the United States drops a 53-cent-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol.
"The subsidies provided under America's corn-based ethanol program have spurred an increase in U.S. cereal prices of about 80 percent," Silva wrote in a column published in The Washington Post. "This hurts meat and soy processors worldwide and threatens global food security."
The promotion of ethanol could eventually help wean the U.S. off its need for foreign oil, officials say, lessening the energy dependence on volatile Middle Eastern nations and Venezuela — whose President Hugo Chavez has long been a political thorn in the Bush administration's side.
But teaming up with Brazil on the promotion of ethanol hasn't pleased everyone. Corn farmers in the U.S. don't like the idea of the government helping Brazil's industry, which they see as a competitor. Lawmakers from corn-growing states have registered their complaints with Bush.
Edited by Deadduck 3/31/2007 17:39
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Silva, Bush to Talk Trade and Ethanol
