CPTPP Appeal China’s aggressive effort to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) may be having an unintended effect – causing the U.S. to reconsider its previous rejection of such an agreement. If China were to join, which seems unlikely but not impossible, then the U.S. would be locked out of Asia. The situation is like how Congressional Democrats’ years-long complaints about NAFTA evaporated when President Trump threatened to withdraw from the agreement. His position either exposed the fraudulence of NAFTA’s opposition, or forced an understanding that you don’t know what you’ve got until it is gone. Either way, the threat enabled the negotiation of the US...
Beef packer margins improved to -$130/head last week, up $44 from the prior week as sharply lower fed cattle prices more than offset continued seasonal weakness in the Choice cutout. The cutout declined to $373/cwt while fed cattle prices fell to $238/cwt, allowing packer spreads to recover for...
What You Need to Know Today: The conflict between the U.S. and Iran continues to escalate with the two sides exchanging attacks over the weekend. President Trump said Iran “will pay” for recent attacks that claimed the lives of U.S. troops stationed in Jordan. There are some signs...
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.