Economic Conundrum The West turned unhappy with China’s trade and economic practices before Donald Trump, but it is unclear that his approach to the problem is working. While the trade hit on U.S. agriculture is clear, the American side is generally faring worse from the trade war. China’s overall exports to the U.S. were down 12.4 percent during January-June 2019 versus a year earlier, but American sales to China were off 19 percent. Indicative of Beijing’s stronger level of economic control over Washington is its foreign direct investment (FDI) in the U.S., which plummeted from $46 billion in 2016 to just $5 billion in 2018. By contrast, U.S. annual FDI into China has stayed consistent at around $13-14 billion. Even i...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets remain mixed with Capesize vessels seeing continued pressure from weaker demand while fixtures and rate strength gradually increases towards the smaller vessel classes. Tanker markets are pulling back from their recent highs as tonnage moves out of the Mid...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.