At a campaign event in Arizona, former President Trump floated the idea of using tariffs on countries who don’t cooperate with the U.S. on illegal immigration, and specifically, those countries taking back citizens who illegally immigrate into the U.S. While most illegal immigration is from Central American countries and Mexico, Trump specifically mentioned China. There have been increasing cases of Chinese immigrants crossing the U.S. Mexican border. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, more than 27,000 Chinese migrants were caught illegally crossing the border in the six months from October 2023 to April 2024. Trump was quick to use tariffs to negotiate trade agreements during his term, and especially against China whic...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.