The repeated threat of sanctions by the EU and U.S. were not enough to prevent Vladimir Putin from moving on Ukraine, and they likely will not be enough to affect Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. He has been the president of the country for most of the past 15 years and the U.S. argues it is because he has repressed his political rivals. Washington is threatening to either remove Nicaragua’s access to the U.S. sugar import quota or kick the country out of CAFTA. Of those two choices, CAFTA bears more weight. Nicaragua already has a relatively small share of the U.S. sugar import quota. It represents just 2.9 percent of Nicaraguan agricultural exports to the U.S. By contrast, ending the broader CAFTA trade agreement benefits received by Ni...
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...
Key Takeaways: The Panama Canal’s draft restrictions and decreasing rainfall outlook are driving big moves in dry bulk markets this week. Panamax markets are sharply lower as the economics of moving freight across the Canal are deteriorating rapidly, leading to support in Supramax vessels...
Key Takeaways: Brazil’s growing role in global agriculture is accompanied by a major vulnerability: the country imports approximately 88 percent of its fertilizer needs. High natural gas costs and development challenges have limited domestic nitrogen and potash production despite Brazil&...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.