World Perspectives

Protectionism Progresses; Misinformation Ceases; Wrong Tool

Protectionism Progresses U.S. trading partners (and many Americans) hoping to wait out the presidency of Donald Trump for someone more conciliatory in the 2020 election should be disheartened listening to the Democrats vying for the job. The trade rhetoric of most leading Democratic contenders (save Joe Biden) is decidedly “progressive,” and even Mr. Biden now promises to soon release his own “progressive trade policy.” Progressives have traditionally been protectionists on behalf of organized labor, and they largely opposed the trade agreements negotiated when Joe Biden was vice president. Donald Trump won the Rust Belt states by adopting the trade policy of the progressive left, which intends to win them back. In...

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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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