Former Fla. Governor Jeb Bush re-states call for elimination of the tariff on Brazilian ethanol

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, speaking at the Americas Conference in Miami, re-stated a call for elimination of the tariff on Brazilian ethanol. He said that “creating a true [biofuels] market with few barriers which allows for the development of local markets, would be a tremendous benefit for the region and the United States.”

Meanwhile, Roberto Rodrigues, a colleague of Gov. Bush on the InterAmerican Ethanol Commission, said that critics are wrong when they say that expanding Brazilian ethanol production would cause destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. He said that “It is pure stupidity to say that the Amazon rainforest will be used to produce sugar cane,” adding that the Amazon region did not provide appropriate growing conditions for sugar cane production.

Rodrigues added that Latin America had sufficient water, infrastructure and growing conditions to be a biofuels global leader in the long term. “Latin American has everything but capital.”

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