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...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
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.