From a reader:

besides eliminating the tariff on ethanol from Brazil, people should be asking why we don’t eliminate tariffs and quotas on sugar, so we could just produce ethanol from sugar here instead of letting them make it in Brazil while we’re at it, let’s eiliminate tariffs on all crops and practice what we preach about free markets for a change…

Me: At some point I’ll delve deeper into this, but I must say that one of my instinctive problems with ethanol is that I think agribusiness is legalized prostitution in many respects and this just opens the door to vast amounts of new legal corruption and rent-seeking which is ultimately bad for the consumer, bad for poor countries and bad for the environment.

Update: Okay, okay “prostitution” isn’t the perfect word, but you get me.