World Perspectives

What the Trade Deficit Says about the U.S. Economy

USDA released its weekly sales report last week with some mixed news, but another trade report has some interesting insights into the overall economy: the August international trade report from the Department of Commerce.  The U.S. trade deficit in all goods and services was $54.9 billion in August; that compares to a deficit of $54 billion in July.  Exports actually increased $500 million in August (0.2 percent), but imports rose faster at $1.3 billion (0.5 percent).   The most important economic indicator from this is that the total volume of trade increased.  Indeed, from an economic perspective, the total volume of trade is an important indicator as it reflects the trend in overall economic activity.  Augu...

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Not an Orphan Crop

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CFTC COT Report Analysis

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Not an Orphan Crop

Sorghum marketers often characterize their commodity as an ancient grain that is drought tolerant. They deflect comments that it is an orphan crop, grown locally for local consumption. They may agree it is under-utilized. In fact, a slightly higher share (16%) of world sorghum production is exp...

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Cattle on Feed Report

USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. Once again, placements surprised to the upside compared to pre-report analysts’ consensus expectations. The total cattle on feed inventory was 11.986 million head, which was slightly above last year’s 11.956 million head. Total feedlot inve...

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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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