China First Donald Trump gets lots of blame for his America First policy, but he did not invent self-interested nationalism. Instead, he more fully adopted the practices of other countries. Developing countries have typically been forgiven for their protectionist policies. The EU has more cleverly packaged its self-interested policies, much as it is doing now with Farm to Fork and the Green Deal. By openly mimicking other countries and playing geopolitical hardball, President Trump has enabled other countries to pursue their own goals with less guilt or constraint. Thus, China bans imports from Australia based solely on a political rationale and inspects imported foods for the coronavirus without showing evidence of its existence or its ri...
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: 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...