World Perspectives

Fungible Assistance and Soybeans; Goodbye Transparency; Election Impacts; FTA Goodwill

Fungible Assistance The World Bank and (largely Japanese-funded) Asian Development Bank continue to provide development assistance to China that is generally focused on low-carbon urban transport plus education and elderly aid. The former gave $2.47 billion in concessional loans to China in 2017. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) separately chips in for poverty relief there. This aid frees up money in Beijing for its own kind of international well-wishing with the net result being that China’s development assistance has declined from a positive $3.5 billion in 1995 to a negative $791 million in 2016 – meaning its overseas development assistance now exceeds the aid it receives. However, this begs the question of why...

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Summary of Futures

May 26 Corn closed at $4.4575/bushel, down $0.0275 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Wheat closed at $5.7725/bushel, down $0.1425 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soybeans closed at $11.64/bushel, down $0.0675 from yesterday's close.  May 26 Soymeal closed at $312.9/short ton, down...

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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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