The historical criticism is that America’s economic interests have taken a backseat to national security objectives, and despite his rhetoric demanding fairer trade, Trump looks to be making the same calculation as his predecessors. Foreign = Trade Trouble China has started importing U.S. beef, albeit in small amounts and under onerous requirements. Now there is hope that poultry will soon flow, and a rice trade protocol is near completion. However, President Trump has now sanctioned a Chinese state bank that was undermining U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and he signed off on weapons sales to Taiwan – though not on any real offensive firepower. Still, his focus on aggressive foreign policy heightens the risk of problems with trade. T...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
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On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.