China Less Easy Than Europe The Nikkei headline says, “Jack Ma slams Western economic models, says Europe over-regulated.” The retiring billionaire, founder of online Chinese marketing giant Alibaba, told his IM/World Bank audience, "In Europe a lot of people talk about regulations, they love to discuss about the worries, asking what ya gonna do. In America they have their system." Instead, he said, he would focus on Africa where there is money to be made. The irony is that he said this to the World Bank whose annual Doing Business report indicates the opposite. Its “Ease of Doing Business” analysis indicates that Scandinavian countries are amongst the easiest for entrepreneurs, whereas his native China ranks as a m...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...