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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Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.4575/bushel, down $0.0025 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.1725/bushel, down $0.0075 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soybeans closed at $10.625/bushel, up $0.0125 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $303.7/short ton, up $0...

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New World Screw Worm: A Threat to Dairy?

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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.

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