Not frequently discussed in the turmoil about trade sanctions is the energy sector. The three countries with which the U.S. is currently engaged in trade disputes, China, Canada and Mexico, are major markets for energy exports. Ethanol has of course become reliant on exports over the past few years. Nearly 1.4 billion gallons were exported last year or about 10 percent of that used for total domestic use. Approximately 1.8 percent went to China, although that was after it imposed tariffs on imports in late 2016 (unrelated to the current trade disputes). China was a major market for U.S. ethanol in 2015, accounting for nearly 24 percent of all exports before dropping off to 6 percent in 2016. Through the first four months of this year, it w...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.