World Perspectives

Dour Trade Prognosis; The Pro-Trade Data; Hope versus Expectation

Dour Trade Prognosis Respondents to WPI’s last survey favored a resolution to the U.S.-China trade war in 2019 (see Hope versus Expectation below), but what are the prospects for an agreement? Expert observers are widely split, although they lean toward skepticism. A new Nikkei survey of economists indicates that China’s economy will slow to 6.2 percent in 2019, the slowest growth in three decades. However, President Xi Jinping and his acolytes are determined to outlast Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has hardliners driving his campaign; U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is noted for being very difficult. Notably, the Democratic Party in the U.S. is trying to reclaim the labor union/blue collar base that it los...

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Summary of Futures

Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.445/bushel, up $0.04 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.0775/bushel, up $0.015 from yesterday's close.  Jan 26 Soybeans closed at $10.5225/bushel, down $0.06 from yesterday's close.  Jan 26 Soymeal closed at $298.4/short ton, up $0.2 from...

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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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