Not Substantially All Trade experts this week noted that the U.S.– Japan trade agreement might violate the WTO’s Article XXIV requirement that free trade agreements encompass “substantially all” trade between the participating countries. The agreement encompasses something less than 70 percent of all trade and while there is no agreed WTO metric defining substantially, some say the interpretation is 90 percent of trade. The U.S. has heretofore prided itself on negotiating more comprehensive free trade agreements, with some criticism of the substantial exclusions for agriculture in agreements negotiated by other countries. The U.S. will likely characterize the Japan agreement as interim, since the intent is to conti...
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.