The steps back to normalcy in Greece have had a short-term impact on southern Europe. With yields falling today on Portuguese, Spanish and Italian government bonds, questions remain as to whether this is just the calm before the storm and what will ultimately happen to the euro.Greek banks reopened today for the first time in three weeks. This occurred after a €7 billion financial bridge was approved last week by EU finance ministers that will allow Greece to avoid defaulting on a bond payment and clean up arrears with the International Monetary Fund. Additionally, austerity measures are in place, which have increased the value-added tax (VAT) on many items that will impact agriculture. The VAT rose from 13 percent to 23 percent on meat, ve...
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...
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.