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Iowa farmer is disappointed with RFS rule–and President Trump

An Iowa farmer says he’s disappointed that President Trump broke his promise to uphold the Renewable Fuel Standard.

“Yes, absolutely,” says Kelly Nieuwenhuis of Primghar.

Nieuwenhuis says the final RFS rule, released yesterday by the EPA, is not what the president agreed to in meetings with Midwestern senators and the biofuels industry.

“It’s just the idea that there’s really no certainty there. We’re going to have to just constantly be after them to make sure they get to 15 billion gallons.”

Nieuwenhuis was among a group of Iowans who met earlier this week with Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow, in a last-ditch effort to influence the final rule.

“He (Kudlow) couldn’t figure out why we wouldn’t be happy with this deal. And we just basically told him—or I did—that for us to put ‘trust’ and ‘the EPA’ in the same sentence was not possible.

“Again, we feel the oil industry took charge of the situation and pretty much forced the hand of our leaders–and made them lean their way with the ruling.”

Nieuwenhuis is also the chairman of the board of the Siouxland Energy ethanol plant at Sioux Center, Iowa, which has been running at about half of its normal capacity due to poor margins.