Legs of War The news that Presidents Trump and Xi plus their negotiators will have extended bilateral discussions around the G20 Summit was seen as hopeful but not definitive. Both sides are dug in deep and short of one side or the other (or both). As it incurs economic calamity, this war would seem to still have legs to it. Indeed, USTR continues with its public investigation into applying tariffs on the remaining batch of goods from China. There is a similar, if less impactful, outlook to the U.S.-India trade war. New Delhi finally retaliated against imports from the U.S. after Washington formally withdrew Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) privileges. The American trading relationship with India is far less meaningful than the one...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Oil prices extended their rally Tuesday as disruptions to global supplies intensified. Saudi Arabia halted crude loadings at its Yanbu Red Sea port following the shutdown of the East-West Pipeline, while protests by oil-sector security workers forced the suspension...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts while leaving poultry almost unchanged. Beef is now projected at 24.877 billion pounds, 90 million pounds below August on slower Q3 fed cattle slaughter and lighter dressed weights, along with an anticipated counterseasonal cutback in...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $156.75/head last week, down $46.05 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while gains in the Choice cutout were comparatively modest. The Choice cutout increased...