Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Ramadan, the month of fasting, started last week in the region’s Muslim countries. It continues until about 16 June and is then followed by the Eid holidays. Business and banking hours will be reduced during this time, and customer contact will be a bit more difficult. Government working hours will also be shortened, making it slightly more time-consuming to obtain such things as import licenses. Officials in Egypt report there are plans to build a railway line from Alexandria (on the Mediterranean) to Damietta (200 km east) and then to the Red Sea at Nuweiba, which will provide an alternative to the trucks that currently must be used for transport. The pre-project study of financ...
What You Need to Know Today: USDA reports are delayed until Tuesday due to the federal holiday on Monday. Over the weekend, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Russia warmly welcomed and confirmed this ceasefire by conducting more strikes against Ukraine. Specific...
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...
Key Takeaways: The United States has steadily lost global wheat export market share since the 1970s, falling from the world's leading exporter to a projected fifth place in 2026/27. The rapid expansion of Black Sea wheat exports, driven by improved productivity and export infrastructure, has r...
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.