Currency Valuation and Trade The Federal Reserve's interest rate decision and the strong U.S. dollar weigh on commodity trading decisions. The TPP and a Provision to Prevent Currency Manipulation There has been a push from certain U.S. sectors to add a provision to the TPP that would prevent signatories from engaging in currency manipulation. Is this a convenient rationale to oppose the agreement or a principled negotiating position? An Appreciating U.S. Dollar in the U.S. Fertilizer Trade The U.S. is a large part of the international fertilizer trade. With more than 40 MMT at an aggregate value exceeding $14 billion moved in and out of the country in 2014, currency fluctuations can and do have a profound impact on this trade sector...
President Trump has opened the door to 100,000 MT of beef lean trimmings (limited to HTS codes 0201.30.5091, 0201.30.5097, 0202.30.5091, and 0202.30.5097) from countries listed under the “Other Countries” TRQ effective 1 September. These imports would not be subject to the over-quot...
Key Takeaways: CHS and OCP plan to invest up to $450 million in a Louisiana phosphate fertilizer facility capable of producing more than 1 MMT annually, marking the first new U.S. plant of its kind in more than 40 years. The facility could reduce U.S. dependence on imported finished phosphate...
A Small Industry Tied to a Global Benchmark The U.S. wool industry is small by global standards but heavily export-dependent, with roughly 60 percent of U.S. wool leaving the country each year. Australia, by contrast, dominates world wool trade. Because the U.S. lacks a deep domestic auction ma...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.