World Perspectives

China Woefully Short

According to an analysis by Bloomberg, China is far behind in making the product purchases from the U.S. that it promised in the Phase One agreement demanded by former President Donald Trump. As of the end of February 2021, China has purchased only a third of the $375 billion in goods that it committed to buying by the end of 2021. Despite buying U.S. corn and soybeans to the point of low stock levels, China has nearly 60 percent of the value of agricultural purchases still to be made in the last 10 months of a two-year period.  The question is, what are the implications for noncompliance? The agreement is an oddity in American trade policy. The 1973 agreement with the Soviet Union for grain purchases was designed to protect against e...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.

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