A Reuters report says the Environmental Protection Agency has awarded tens of millions of dollars’ worth of biofuel blending credits for this year to refiners HollyFrontier and Sinclair Oil. Two sources tell Reuters the refiners argued that the agency had wrongly denied them waivers from the country’s biofuels law as far back as 2014. It’s likely to add fuel to the fire in the ongoing dispute between oil refiners and the renewable fuels industry over the future of America’s biofuels policy by opening the door to similar challenges in the future. The EPA’s move may put even more pressure on credit prices, which have plummeted to five-year lows as the agency has expanded the small refinery waiver program. The EPA gave Hollyfrontier nearly $34 million worth of credits to reverse a denial for one of its Wyoming plants that dated back to 2015. The agency also gave undisclosed millions more to Sinclair for two of its facilities in the state for both 2014 and 2015.

House Ag Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson says that American tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will generate retaliation that will hit farm exports hard. As a result, he’ll be working with House and Senate Ag Committee leaders on a new farm bill to protect farmers from “the market fluctuations caused by these actions.” A USDA spokesman says President Trump “will not allow American agriculture to bear the brunt of retaliatory tactics.” However, in an email to the Hagstrom Report, Peterson says, “That the administration has decided to move forward with these wrongheaded tariffs, even though farmers have repeatedly warned about retaliation from trade partners, shows that the administration isn’t listening or just doesn’t care.” Instead of a farm bill focused on welfare reform, Peterson says he looks forward to working with leadership to craft a bill that protects farmers from the market fluctuations caused by these tariffs. The legislation should also invest in trade promotion to help them rebuild lost markets. The USDA spokesman says the agency is continuing to work to expand existing markets and to come up with new ones for American agricultural products.

A coalition of biofuel and agriculture groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to change its regulations to account for lost volumes of renewable fuel resulting from the unprecedented number of retroactive small refinery exemptions from Renewable Fuel Standard obligations recently granted by EPA. The petition comes days after several ethanol and farm groups challenged three specific small refinery exemptions granted by EPA. While the lawsuit in the Tenth Circuit challenged those exemptions as wrongly decided, this petition to EPA seeks a broader, forward-looking remedy to account for the collective lost volumes caused by the unprecedented number of retroactive small refinery exemptions. “EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has had a fire sale on small refiner exemptions for anyone with a stamp and an envelope, making a mockery of the President’s commitment to a 15-billion-gallon RFS for conventional biofuel. This must end. We take no pleasure in having to litigate to protect the integrity of the RFS, but it appears we have no other recourse,” said RFA CEO Bob Dinneen.

Senate Ag Committee Chair Pat Roberts has set a date for introducing the Senate Farm Bill, with full debate to take place the following week. A Feedstuffs Dot Com article says Roberts made the announcement at a farm bill forum in his home state, alongside Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue and fellow Kansas Senator Jerry Moran. Roberts says he has a clear path to bringing the bill to the floor of the Senate, as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised he won’t file cloture on the bill, a potential hurdle that could delay consideration. Roberts did reiterate that the House version of the farm bill wouldn’t pass in the Senate because he’ll need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. The House version, which hasn’t passed yet, is still relying solely on Republican votes to get through the chamber. Roberts also said the Senate version won’t be proposing any major changes to SNAP, but could possibly look into “some efficiencies we can make as to how that program is run.” He also mentioned that the Senate bill will “fix the ARC program to some degree.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the U.S. will move forward with steel and aluminum tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. Farmers for Free Trade Executive Director Brian Kuehl says that decision opens the floodgates to billions in new tariffs on American agriculture. The list of countries that are targeting, or planning to target, now includes 28 EU members, our closest trading partners in Canada and Mexico, and the world’s largest export markets in China and India. U.S. Grains Council President and CEO Tom Sleight says his group is deeply concerned about the new tariffs set to be implemented. “Based on the information we’ve heard from our customers and past experience, we have U.S. agriculture, including the products we represent, will be among the first hit by countermeasures from our trading partners,” Sleight says, “and these countries are our closest neighbors and friends. We’ve spent years building these relationships and markets with other countries.”

President Donald Trump is moving ahead with steel and aluminum tariffs on some of the United States’ closest allies and that could result in serious pain for agriculture. Politico says any official documents released by the administration are expected to include some wiggle room for allies. European Union officials are said to be resigned to accepting that some sort of tariffs are coming their way. The EU has vowed to hit back with retaliatory tariffs. A recent list compiled by the EU targeted $3.3 billion worth of U.S. imports. Politico says the list shows products targeted for retaliation were drafted so as not to harm European Union industries. Some of the products are clearly designed to impact Republican-leaning states, such as Kentucky bourbon. Others on the list include rice, peanut butter, orange juice, and cranberries. Canada and Mexico aren’t immune from the tariffs either, and both countries have said they will retaliate. “It’s frankly absurd that we would in any way be considered to be a national security threat to the United States,” says Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

American producers are suffering from dizziness, thanks to the back-and-forth headlines regarding the U.S.-China trade dispute. Tuesday, the Trump Administration announced it was moving ahead with plans for protecting intellectual U.S. property. Politico says the administration will take steps to impose 25-percent tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, plus, establish broad investment restrictions and pursue litigation with the World Trade Organization. But what’s real and what isn’t? Michelle Erickson-Jones, president of the Montana Grain Growers Association, says, “It’s so hard to tell what’s rhetoric and what’s real, though it would surprise me if we went forward with these tariffs.” The level of uncertainty caused by the U.S.-China conflict, as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations, is hard on commodity markets. It also jeopardizes relationships with overseas commodity buyers. Jones says countries are already looking for other buyers. As an example, she points out that Mexico recently purchased wheat from Argentina for the first time in modern history. In spite of the president’s recent tendency to back down on threats against China, they still have to be taken seriously because the country is such an important market for American farmers. Kevin Paap, Minnesota Farm Bureau President, says “It’s an emotional issue for soybean growers. China is our safety net.”