News from inside the trade negotiations with China has generally been positive for about six months. Starting late last year (19 December 2018), the 1 January effective date of the U.S. tariff rate increases on Chinese goods was pushed back to 2 March to facilitate ongoing negotiations. From that time until 6 May, the administration repeatedly said that progress was steady, a deal was in the offing and that the U.S. tariffs imposed on China were working. At this point, that assertion about the effectiveness of tariffs is a highly unprovable proposition. Overall, China stopped importing U.S. goods at a higher rate through 2018 than the U.S. stopped importing Chinese goods. While the first quarter (Q1) 2019 trade deficit with China is way do...
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...
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.