As he sought votes during last year’s Iowa caucuses, candidate Donald Trump courted farmers with praise for ethanol and promises that he would boost the home-grown fuel. Now those farmers and other biofuel supporters say the people President Trump has put in charge of the issue in Washington are instead boosting their fossil-fuel rivals. “This seems like a bait-and-switch,” Iowa’s senior Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, said on the Senate floor this week. “Big Oil and oil refineries are prevailing, despite assurances to the contrary.” The issue is politically precarious for Trump, as it pits the oil industry against Midwest voters who helped elect him. Trump repeatedly vowed to “protect” ethanol. But he loaded his cabinet with allies of the oil industry, which views the Renewable Fuel Standard that mandates biofuel use as costly and burdensome. Ethanol producers are most vexed by Scott Pruitt, the head of the […]