Trade WarPost the November U.S. election, the focus has been on preparing for an inevitable trade war with the U.S. China has increased government reserve stocks and increased imports from Brazil. Traders worked to get ahead of the new Trump tariffs with Chinese exports in December jumping 10.7 percent. Some argue that China is already winning the industrial trade war. Its exports in 2024 reached nearly $1 trillion. A study by Rabobank says that retaliation by China to President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff plan will cause the price of soybeans to drop $1.50 - $2.00/bushel and will result in 5 million acres fewer soybeans being planted. It assumes China imposes a 25 percent tariff on all imports from grain and oilseeds from the U.S. Chi...
Key Takeaways: The significance of $100-per-barrel crude depends largely on how long prices remain elevated, as sustained high energy costs are more likely to influence longer-term agricultural decisions. Higher crude oil prices raise farm production costs most directly through diesel, while a...
Key Takeaways: Corn and soybean meal markets are tightening together for the first time in more than a year, driven by lower U.S. yield expectations and continued Chinese soybean demand. A strong El Niño is replacing last year’s La Niña, shifting crop risk across the Americ...
The U.S. will observe Labor Day on Monday, 7 September. U.S. markets and the WPI office will be closed that day. The next edition of Ag Perspectives will be published Tuesday, 8 September...
Key Takeaways: Drought and changes to the multi-year trend in cow slaughter and retention have the potential to dramatically alter beef trim supplies and pricing, and WPI specifically models three different drought scenarios for fall 2026. Based on our models, WPI expects 90 percent lean...
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.