Latest Trade War Outlook The U.S. and China exchanged the latest round of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs, imposing 25 percent additional costs on reciprocal $32 billion worth of trade. China says the U.S. remains “obstinate,” but so does Beijing. The Trump administration raises the stakes in tranches so that markets don’t get spooked, although its hope is that the economic pressure becomes greater on China and forces an end to its own obstinacy. This will take substantial pressure since the Trump administration is demanding major fundamental changes in the way the Chinese operate. There remains a certain normalcy to the bilateral relationship as the Nikkei reports that Chinese tech startups have doubled their Wall Street...
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.