After a very quiet prior week with limited activity, market conditions became significantly more active. Futures rallied early in the week after President Trump said he had spoken with Xi Jinping and that China agreed to buy up to 20 MMT of U.S. soybeans. China has already purchased around 12 MMT, leaving potential room for an additional 8 MMT. The announcement triggered a strong futures response, particularly as the earlier 12 MMT commitment was fully executed, with Cofco taking about 4 MMT and Sinograin purchasing the remaining 8 MMT, reinforcing confidence in China’s follow-through. The futures rally sparked heavy farmer selling in Brazil, with roughly 5 MMT reportedly originated during the week, pressuring Brazilian basis values...
What You Need to Know Today: Iran says its definition of the Strait of Hormuz is now a “vast operation area” that stretches from Jask to Siri Island. The White House said President Trump did not sign a suspension of the TRQs on beef imports but is “finalizing potential...
If the media headlines and Trump critics are to be believed, President Trump is headed to Beijing this Thursday in a weakened position. China is in control, it has the upper hand, and expectations are very low. These are the same critics that argue against overly simplistic zero-sum analyses in...
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.