For the ethanol producers (based on the first paragraph), but I'll stop short of declaring the Renewable Fuels Association a microeconomics-free zone (based on the second paragraph). As Robert Pear reports in Sunday's edition of The New York Times:
“We may be the only industry in U.S. history that voluntarily let a subsidy expire,” said Matthew A. Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group for ethanol producers. “The marketplace has evolved. The tax incentive is less necessary now than it was just two years ago. Ethanol is 10 percent of the nation’s gasoline supply.”
In response to a question about how the loss of the subsidy might affect prices and supply, Mr. Hartwig said: “We don’t expect the price of corn to fall or rise just because the tax incentive goes away. We will produce the same amount of ethanol in 2012 as in 2011, or more.”
Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said, “With record deficits and a ballooning national debt, it was ludicrous to expect taxpayers to pay billions to prop up a mature industry that should be able to fend for itself.”
I would still prefer a carbon tax on nonrenewable fuels, but this is a step in the right direction. Let's hope the subsidy doesn't "unexpire" with election-year politics.