The messaging has been all to assuaging with White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow and the President himself saying things are going very well. Both equities and commodities are now expecting some interim deal to keep the party going. Now to put a governor on all is the President’s external advisor on China matters, Michael Pillsbury, who says Mr. Trump is ready to escalate the trade war if a deal is not agreed to soon. Really? The 2020 election seems to loom larger than Beijing’s concerns of the economy and Hong Kong. Ether way, Robert Manning at the Atlantic Council is correct in that Washington erroneously wants to change everything about China all at once. Its trade and economic practices, technology goals, geopol...
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.