Economic Chemistry Power The major powers (Europe, Russia, U.S. and China) have long used their dominant economic influence to coerce other nations into compliant policies. The U.S. has added labor and environment positions to its trade pacts ever since NAFTA in 1994. In its most recent trade agreement, Europe nominally committed Mercosur members to compliance with the Paris climate accord and limits on deforestation. However, Europe’s latest plan to impose chemical-free farming on other nations has drawn the ire of 15 major food-exporting countries. They are complaining at the WTO that the EU’s “hazard”-based approach is violative of the science-based risk assessments agreed in international fora and is more trade...
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.