President Trump says that the Chinese asked to resume negotiations, but nothing is publicly scheduled, and the Chinese foreign ministry says it knows nothing about it. If this is a fib by the President, Beijing will interpret it as reflecting vulnerability. That vulnerability is emphasized by current events. While surveys now indicate that the American public is giving Mr. Trump less credit for the economy and his support from farmers is falling, China is about to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the communist party. At minimum these mean no near-term solution to the trade war, but the larger war outcome remains uncertain. For example, it is unclear that Mr. Trump losing in 2020 will bring an end to the trade fight. Democratic Part...
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.