Gutsy USTR USTR Katherine Tai is in an interagency battle over whether to lift tariffs on China to try and stem inflation, and she’s not backing down in her opposition to such a move. Yesterday she told Congress that, “The China tariffs are, in my view, a significant piece of leverage, and a trade negotiator never walks away from leverage.” Making such a strong statement on an issue undergoing internal Administration debate puts her in a very public fight against Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who favors the cuts. Somebody will lose and historically, presidents have sided with the troika (State, Treasury, or Defense). She then even stepped directly onto the figurative turf of Treasury by telling the Committ...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets opened double digits higher Sunday evening following the release of Chinese and American official summaries of bilateral discussions last week. They chose the more optimistic view of future Chinese purchases of American farm goods versus the more opaque inte...
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday launched an investigation into the beef industry over potential anticompetitive conduct among the nation’s largest meatpackers, his office announced Friday. He said the investigation would be conducted alongside a separate antitrust probe announ...
Update for 6 April 2025: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where ob...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.