China Forces Trump Hand He has tried to take on the world singlehandedly, but China’s resistance has forced President Trump to back off on his objectives elsewhere. Farmers, Republicans and the U.S. economy can only handle so much controversy at once. He was forced to end tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico without obtaining his months-long goal of quotas. And instead of imposing 25 percent duties on automobiles from Europe and Japan, he has given a negotiated settlement up to six months to work, although that is likely to be extended. Look for an all-out blitz to complete free trade negotiations with Japan. Global Readjustment The U.S.–China trade war is headed toward an all-encompassing brawl involv...
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.