World Perspectives

Dollar Exchange Rate Impacts on Trade

President Trump is using tariffs to rectify what he asserts is the unfair practices by other countries. He also accuses trading partners of currency manipulation. He is correct that currency exchange rates impact the competitiveness of U.S. exports. USDA’s Economic Research Service maintains a currency exchange rate database that weighs the impact of the dollar’s value on trade based on both the commodity, and the trading partner country. In terms of countries and exchange rates, the Trump tariff war was expected to increase the value of the dollar as a safe haven in turbulent times, but the opposite happened. Most currencies have instead rallied against the dollar. Year-to-date, the dollar is down 8.6 percent versus the Japanes...

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WPI Crop Progress and Conditions App (Updated 2 September)

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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.

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