World Perspectives

Value-Added Jugular

The Trump Administration has dubiously used trade balances as a metric for measuring relative policy fairness but France’s digital tax and the proposed retaliation against it by Washington highlights differences in the composition of trade. Although the U.S. committed to negotiate with Europe on a singular OECD approach to digital enterprise taxes, no one expects a resolution before the two sides meet in Davos later this month. Instead, more retaliatory duties will be imposed on French goods - targeting champagne, cheese and other higher priced foods.  The duties will have an outsized impact because of the composition of bilateral transatlantic trade. Ninety percent of Europe’s food exports to the U.S. are intermediate and...

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CFTC COT Report Analysis

Once again, the major finding of Friday’s CFTC report is that funds still remain solidly bullish corn and added another 7 percent to their long position in that market. That was particularly impressive as the week ending 19 November (the reporting deadline for the CFTC report) included days wit...

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Market Commentary: Black Sea Instability and Trade War Influences

There were some jitters this week as Russia and Ukraine stepped up assaults ahead of what may become talks to end the conflict. Alongside concerns about a kinetic war is the uncertainty around the incoming Trump Administration’s aggressions in trade policy.It should be noted that geopolitical u...

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Regional News Eastern Ukraine and southern Russia remain unseasonably warm and dry, though the regions received beneficial rains at the end of last week. The Balkans saw unusually heavy rainfall from the same storm system. Polish protesters are planning on blocking the border with Ukr...

feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

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livestock

Cattle on Feed Report

USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. Once again, placements surprised to the upside compared to pre-report analysts’ consensus expectations. The total cattle on feed inventory was 11.986 million head, which was slightly above last year’s 11.956 million head. Total feedlot inve...

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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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