First quarter global merchandise trade accelerated faster than expected as everyone expedited purchases ahead of tariffs and potential slowing of import demand. These market exchanges have likely remained accelerated ahead of the now 1 August tariff deadline, but increased costs were apparent in today’s CPI report for June. However, the uptick in inflation was too small to sidetrack Mr. Trump’s plan. The President announced a trade deal with Indonesia that sounds largely lopsided in favor of the U.S., and there are rumors of an impending deal with India. The two hard to crack nuts are the EU and Japan. Brussels has been holding on retaliation but now faults Washington for resisting a deal. The White House believes Europe c...
With no bullish surprise out of Beijing this week and good weather taking over many global crop areas, funds spent the past couple of days selling off the peak positions they had built. CNN’s Live Updates blared, “No signs Trump and Xi resolved any thorny challenges.” By...
The long-awaited meeting between President Trump and President Xi of China has concluded, and details are elusive, though Trump stated today that he and Xi made some “fantastic” trade deals. Both countries reported the meetings as a success, but that has more to do with positioning...
We at WPI hear frequently that U.S. agriculture is broken and needs fixing. This argument is often heard in MAHA-related discussions and focuses on highly processed food consumption or the overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Among farmers and food processors, however, especially tho...
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.