Yesterday the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the June Consumer Price Index (CPI) showing a 0.2 percent growth in June, the smallest monthly increase since August 2021. There are a few ways to look at the numbers, however. On the one hand, the 3 percent annual inflation is a big drop from the 9.1 percent annual inflation last June (the highest since November 1981). On the other hand, the “core CPI” which the Fed looks at – which excludes volatile food and energy costs – is up 4.8 percent year over year, enough to keep the Fed hawkish in trying to reach its 2 percent inflation goal. Indeed, food and energy – especially energy – have been volatile over the past year. Energy inflation was d...
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.