The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met on 1-2 May and decided to leave interest rates unchanged. The June meeting, however, will likely be another story as it is expected to increase the federal funds rate 25 basis points, which is currently at 1.75 percent after being raised in March. Given the strong likelihood of a hike next month, that means a rate of at least 2 percent by the end of 2018. Further, the Fed has raised rates at each of the last three December meetings. If the FOMC follows suit this year, that would put the funds rate at 2.25 percent. Others believe the language of the post-meeting statement hints at a total of four interest rate increases this year, and that would put the overnight federal funds rate at 2.5 percent...
What You Need to Know Today: USDA reports are delayed until Tuesday due to the federal holiday on Monday. Over the weekend, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Russia warmly welcomed and confirmed this ceasefire by conducting more strikes against Ukraine. Specific...
On Saturday, 10 October, at a campaign rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, President Trump said that the U.S. and Mexico would come to terms on a new trade deal, and he said Canada does not need to be part of the deal. Trump called the coming agreement with Mexico “great” but gave no d...
Key Takeaways: The United States has steadily lost global wheat export market share since the 1970s, falling from the world's leading exporter to a projected fifth place in 2026/27. The rapid expansion of Black Sea wheat exports, driven by improved productivity and export infrastructure, has r...
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.