World Perspectives

Truth and Hollow Threats

Speaking Truth to Power In an interview with the Nikkei, Japanese Foreign Trade Council Chairman Shoei Utsuda astutely explained why his country should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He acknowledged that it would "inevitably entail pain," but it would catalyze deregulation and stoke domestic economic growth. Indeed, the primary benefit of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is said to be the way it forced reform of Mexico's domestic policies. Utsuda also correctly noted that Japan ending the use of nuclear power would expose the nation to the much larger risk of full dependence on volatile external markets for its energy needs. More Hollow Threats Karel De Gucht has been the EU's trade minister for nearly two yea...

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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.

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