Don't be Stupid: US, EU block Brazilian attempt to slash biofuel tariffs at WTO

The U.S. has an opportunity to solidify a relationship that could pay huge mutual dividends.

From the International Herald Tribune:

...Petroleum products, like gasoline, face no tariffs.
Critics say U.S. and EU ethanol tariffs are in place to protect American and European farmers who cannot produce the fuel as cheaply as in Latin America's largest nation. Brazil could become the world's undisputed ethanol superpower because its sugarcane is more efficient for ethanol production than the corn used to make the fuel in the United States and the sugarbeet used by European countries....MORE

From Reuters:
Petrobras urges U.S. ethanol import tariff cut

From the Arab-Brazil (!) News Agency:
New oil reserve should not stop Brazil from investing in biofuel

From Xinhua: Discovery may lead Brazil to join OPEC

Did I mention:
Petrobras' Tupi Oil Field May Hold 8 Billion Barrels
(from Bloomberg)

From Dinheiro Rural:
George Soros ataca no campo
O megainvestidor que já abalou mercados desperta para o agronegócio e injeta US$ 900 milhões no Brasil rural
O megainvestidor George Soros mudou. O homem que já especulou contra o Banco da Inglaterra, contra quase todas as moedas da Ásia e contra o próprio Brasil, em 2002, agora está investindo no agronegócio nacional. Esse senhor de 76 anos, cuja fortuna é estimada em US$ 7,2 bilhões, acaba de adentrar o time de bilionários bilhões, acaba de adentrar o time de bilionário.

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Bilionário na lavoura Empresa de Soros atua com café, algodão e, agora, na cana

From the Orlando Sentinel: Crist supports lowering tax on Brazilian ethanol

From the Financial Times via marginal Revolution:
Ricardo Haussman is bullish on biofuels

He writes in the FT:

...technology is bound to deliver a biofuel that will be competitive with fossil energy at something like current prices. It probably already has. Brazil has been exporting ethanol to the US at an average delivery price of $1.45 for an amount with the energy equivalence of a gallon of petrol. It is doing so profitably and in increasing amounts, in spite of a 54 cents a gallon tariff to protect American maize-based ethanol producers. Many countries are following suit....MORE

From the WSJ's DealJournal blog:
The Blackstone of Brazil — With Happy Shareholders

...For one thing, Brazil is booming. According to Antonio Bonchristiano and Fersen Lamas Lambranho, GP’s co-CEOs, the Brazilian IPO market is on track to be the third most active in the world this year, after China and the U.S. They estimated there will have been 80 IPOs raising a total of $30 billion by the time 2007 is over, including the sale last month of stock in the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange itself.

Finally, from venezuelanalysis.com:

In less than two years, the lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the country’s leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease “on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami–an Ecuadorean base".

"If there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.”

Since an Ecuadorean military outpost in South Beach is a long shot...