Last Thursday was a big day for tax reform proposals in Congress. The House Ways and Means Committee passed its Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by a vote of 24-16 that day, and the Senate Finance Committee unveiled its version of tax reform. However, there are some key differences between the two on some big-ticket, politically important items. The Senate plan proposes seven marginal tax brackets of 10, 12, 22.5, 25, 32.5, 35 and 38.5 percent. The top rate would start for single taxpayers with taxable income of more than $500,000 and for married taxpayers jointly filing with taxable income over $1 million. In contrast, the House bill has four marginal tax rates. The Senate bill would eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes entirely, but t...
What You Need to Know Today: USDA reports are delayed until Tuesday due to the federal holiday on Monday. Over the weekend, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Russia warmly welcomed and confirmed this ceasefire by conducting more strikes against Ukraine. Specific...
On Saturday, 10 October, at a campaign rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, President Trump said that the U.S. and Mexico would come to terms on a new trade deal, and he said Canada does not need to be part of the deal. Trump called the coming agreement with Mexico “great” but gave no d...
Key Takeaways: The United States has steadily lost global wheat export market share since the 1970s, falling from the world's leading exporter to a projected fifth place in 2026/27. The rapid expansion of Black Sea wheat exports, driven by improved productivity and export infrastructure, has r...
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.