During the Cold War, the economic benefits of trade were considered secondary to national security. The Pentagon at the time told U.S. agriculture that the Common Agriculture Policy was the glue that held Europe together and that was more important vis-à-vis the Soviet Union than any harm to American farm sales. This week’s Sino-American meeting in Anchorage proved that once again, trade is taking a back seat. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken opened the meeting with China with the Biden Administration’s top priorities: repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, governance in Hong Kong, the future of Taiwan, cyberattacks, and Beijing’s treatment of Australia. As noted in Politico, several senior members of the Biden A...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
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.