World Perspectives

Trade War Threatens WTO

Beijing is backing Amina Mohamed to become the next director-general of the WTO. China has invested heavily in Kenya and knows that an African would be more sympathetic to China retaining its “developing” country status while blocking some liberalization rules. By contrast, Washington is supporting former New Zealand trade minister Tim Groser, a staunch free trader. U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to threaten U.S, withdrawal from the WTO if it becomes a quasi-China-led organization. It should be noted that Nigeria has nominated Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the job so this leadership opening also threatens African unity. Separately, the polarization around China is expanding. Tokyo had passed on joining a western message chasti...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

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.

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