The multi-year effort to negotiate a trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur appears to have run into too many hurdles on both sides of the Atlantic. France is a key blocker in Europe, with claims that the environmental provisions are not tough enough on South America. Argentina said it was on hold until President-elect Javier Milei is sworn in this weekend but now that country’s current Foreign Minister, Santiago Cafiero, warns that the agreement is “bad” and will have a “negative impact on industry and agricultural exports.” The EU Commission has tried to temper concerns about the deal and other trade initiatives by emphasizing its “defensive trade measures” for blocking imports. Chad Bown at...
The Trump Administration is planning a suspension of tariff rate quotas (TRQs) on beef from all exporters for 200 days as a means to address high beef prices in the U.S. U.S. cattle and beef prices have increased based on exceptionally strong consumer demand, the smallest U.S. cattle herd in 75...
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.