Geopolitics and Trade Post WWII trade policy by Washington was largely driven by Cold War tactics. Offer countries easier access to the big American consumer market in exchange for supporting the West against the Soviet Union. There was a brief 20-year period after the fall of the USSR in which geopolitics and economics became less entangled but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s hysteric reaction to a U.S. Congresswoman going to Taiwan has changed the calculus. Now the Biden White House has put possible tariff cuts on Chinese goods on hold, and it has imposed ample sanctions on Russia. Labor’s Distortions USTR Katherine Tai made clear in her presentation this week to the United Steelworkers’ union that orga...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.