White House advisor Peter Navarro is discounting the optimism surrounding U.S. and China trade negotiations, arguing there are too many large issues at stake for it to close out satisfactorily on short-order. The focus has been on things like market access and intellectual property protections, but global finance is also a major problem. China has not made itself subject to the guidelines for officially supported export credits under an OECD agreement. When China joined the WTO, 90 percent of government trade financing operated within WTO rules but now less than half comply. The reason is that other governments are now trying to compete with Beijing – export credits have been weaponized. They are also filling a gap that was created w...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.