Down with the U.S. Dollar European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker is not the first, but he is the most significant world leader to propose shedding the use of the U.S. dollar in financial transactions. Donald Trump is not the first U.S. president to use the USD’s dominance in transactions as foreign policy leverage, but he is the first to do so in such a unilateral fashion as he is in the case of Iran. Going to this leverage well too often and so narcissistically is why other major countries are seeking to bypass use of the U.S. dollar when they can. Trump is proving that he has not only defamed the nation but its currency as well. There is a benefit in being the dominant reserve currency, although things like seemingly unlimit...
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...
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.