World Perspectives

Import, Not Just Export; Missing Consumers; Attack on Scale; Miscellaneous Policy Shorts

Import, Not Just Export The Indian government is developing a new national agricultural trade policy that is intended to boost the country’s export of food and agricultural products. Exports have been variable since, under the Essential Commodities Act, the government imposes export restrictions whenever food prices become elevated. Only some products would become permanently exempt from export restrictions, and the government is negotiating improved market access with several countries. However, excluded from the new policy is any constraint on raising barriers to imported food when domestic prices become deflated. This is an example of the beggar-thy-neighbor approach in trade policy that prevails around the world.   Missing...

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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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