Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is turning to the American business community for help in convincing the United States to lift the import tariff on his country's ethanol, a world-leading alternative fuel.

Following his recent talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, Lula, the first Latin American leader to meet with the president, asked for business leaders to join him in imploring the Obama administration to drop "absurd tariffs on ethanol."

Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol is subject to a 53 cent-per-gallon U.S. import tariff.

The Brazilian leader noted that "many countries still don't place any tariff on polluting fuels" and that a White House that professes to be environmentally conscious should break from Bush administration's long-held policy of maintaining the tax.

Ethanol tariffs have long been seen as a means of protecting American corn producers and corn-based ethanol manufacturers from foreign imports, especially Brazilian ethanol, which is cheaper to produce and more fuel-efficient than the corn-based biofuel.

Lula, who during his seven years in office has become one of the world's most vocal proponents of ethanol use, pointed to the success of its use in Brazil in reducing that country's reliance on petroleum. By law, all new cars in Brazil must be "flex fuel" vehicles capable of running on either ethanol or a mixture of ethanol and gasoline.

Lula added that even were the tariff lifted, Brazil could not meet the entire U.S. demand for ethanol fuel, leaving room in the market for American corn ethanol producers as well as creating a market for other developing countries to produce and sell ethanol.

Brazil already sponsors programs in several sub-Saharan African countries that encourage sugarcane cultivation and ethanol production.

Lula's pleas for an end to ethanol tariffs have not fallen on deaf ears in Washington, as they often did during the Bush presidency, said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"There is a growing constituency in the United States to allow for more space for biofuels, like sugarcane ethanol," Sotero told United Press International, noting the renewed interest in reducing fossil fuel dependency.

"If people are serious about climate change, it makes no sense to continue a policy that allows for free trade of fossil fuels and regulates and limits trade on biofuels."

Environmental advantages aside, however, ending the ethanol tariff would prove particularly unpopular with the Midwestern corn-producing states Obama successfully courted in Indiana and Iowa that helped him win the presidency.

Meanwhile, Lula is still having to defend ethanol on another front altogether, particularly against those who contend the alternative fuel is directly responsible for the recent increase in Amazon forest depletion.

For years, Brazilian energy experts have refuted claims that the ethanol sector was a contributor to Amazon destruction, noting that the climate of the forest region is not ideal for cane growth. Much of Brazil's ethanol production comes from the more temperate clime of Sao Paulo state in the country's southeast.

But detractors contend that Brazilian cane growers are already pushing the boundaries of the Amazon and that the industry's expansion during the last several years due to rising oil prices was responsible for farmers switching to sugarcane in already established agricultural regions, prompting those growing other crops to encroach on the Amazon.