U.S. to Appeal COOL Case in WTO The U.S. Trade Representative has announced that the U.S. will appeal the WTO's November 2011 ruling against country of origin labeling (COOL). WTO's decision on the appeal will be forthcoming in 60-90 days.One could almost hear the buzz of the "black helicopters" in the tone of the overwrought paranoia that was R-CALF's press release on the decision. "We're extremely thankful that our U.S. Trade Representative has chosen to defend our constitutionally-passed COOL law," said R-CALF USA Region VI Director and COOL Committee Chair Mike Schultz. "But, we're in a no-win situation regarding this frontal attack on our COOL law because our nation should not tolerate for an instant a foreign entity's efforts to...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.