High Stakes in Mexico Corn Case AMLO has said he is ready to go to a dispute settlement case to defend his ban on GMO corn from the U.S. He is arguing that it is necessary to protect the genetics of 59 indigenous corn varieties. U.S. government trade officials have been historically reluctant to file SPS cases, and in particular those based on GMO’s for fear of the precedent of a defeat. Both Washington and Mexico City may be considering the Dolphin-Tuna case that took 20 years to litigate. The WTO ruled against a U.S. requirement that restricted tuna imports to those caught using technology to reduce dolphin bycatch. The panel said rules can apply to the product but not the process or processing. Decades later the WTO subsequ...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.