World Perspectives

Difficult Tea Leaves; Policy Shorts

Difficult Tea Leaves President Trump previously laid down a hard 90-day deadline for reaching a trade agreement with China, but now he says one could arrive "within the next four weeks or maybe less, or maybe more, whatever it takes." Some say timing of a deal is driven by Mr. Trump being in Japan during both May and June, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is also owed a state welcome in the U.S. Mr. Trump was much more specific on this point, saying an agreement would lead to a summit, but "if there's no deal, a summit with Xi is off." Meanwhile, Brussels would like this all resolved because Beijing won’t strike a deal with Europe until it is. It may be a little easier to read the tea leaves on USMCA. First, there is Mr. Trump&rsquo...

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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.

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