India’s Opportunity Sometime next year India will promulgate its next five-year Foreign Trade Policy (FTP). Based on the past five years, India has been operating an anti-trade policy. Average tariffs on industrial goods have risen from an average 13.3 percent to 17.6 percent, and in agriculture the rise has been from 36.3 percent to 43.02 percent. Worse for India’s trading partners has been the uncertainty caused by constant changes in applied tariffs with a high bound tariff ceiling. Then there has been the addition of the GST, the IGST levy, the “additional duties” and the “special duties.” Around 70 percent of imports are impacted, all in the goal of self-sufficiency. Meanwhile, its public sto...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: The tariff burden rose sharply in 2025 and 2026: the effective rate on imports in HTS Chapters 1–24 increased from 1.53 percent in 2024 to 6.11 percent in 2025, before averaging 5.68 percent in January–August 2026. Headline rates tell only part of the story: exemptio...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.