USMCA Reckoning USTR Robert Lighthizer and his Canadian and Mexican counterparts are meeting today to discuss the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Lighthizer will likely give a brief on the final demands by Democrats before allowing Congressional consideration of the trade pact. Key will be the labor rights enforcement provisions demanded to be imposed on Mexico. Organized labor has played hardball, once demanding that shipments of goods crossing the border be seized if produced with substandard labor requirements. The question is whether the latest bottom line is low enough for Mexico City to abide. Make my Brown Eyes Green China claims fidelity to the Paris Agreement on climate change and yet, according to the Global Energy Monitor, Beiji...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.