China Forces Trump Hand He has tried to take on the world singlehandedly, but China’s resistance has forced President Trump to back off on his objectives elsewhere. Farmers, Republicans and the U.S. economy can only handle so much controversy at once. He was forced to end tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico without obtaining his months-long goal of quotas. And instead of imposing 25 percent duties on automobiles from Europe and Japan, he has given a negotiated settlement up to six months to work, although that is likely to be extended. Look for an all-out blitz to complete free trade negotiations with Japan. Global Readjustment The U.S.–China trade war is headed toward an all-encompassing brawl involv...
What You Need to Know Today: Traders are increasingly focused on next Wednesday’s August WASDE report, with corn and soybean yield estimates expected to drive the next major move in grain markets. Recent crop condition declines and late-July heat have increased uncertainty around USDA&rs...
Yesterday the Senate Agriculture Committee held its markup of the “skinny” farm bill, and it was derailed over Democratic opposition to plans for imposing food stamp costs on state governments. The Democrats pushed back on a provision that required states to pick up a larger share o...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s 2025/26 corn export models continue to reflect strong international demand and put the total marketing year volume slightly above USDA’s estimates. Strong old crop corn exports are offset by weaker feed and residual use, leaving ending stocks slightly ele...
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.