A successful public forum by the WTO should be centered on why imports are actually good for everyone and emphasize that the focus cannot be solely on the current account as the capital account is ignored. Tax Extender Benders The Senate Finance Committee floated a bill that would extend certain expired tax benefits, and, as usual, the result may be good politics but not necessarily good policy. Biodiesel wins the day with a retroactive extension of its $1/gallon tax credit, despite the acknowledgement by some in the industry that it is unnecessary icing on the cake. Meanwhile, the bill fails to extend tax deductions previously allowed for contributing conservation easements. Rich countries are imposing the Reducing Emissions from Defores...
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.
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...