U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said last week that the new EU leadership under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made him optimistic over the reengagement of U.S.-EU trade negotiations. After all, new leadership typically enables resets. However, optimism may be too strong of an emotion. This week European Director-General for Trade Sabine Weyand is in Washington, and she spoke today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her visit is on the anniversary of the Trump-Juncker agreement. While there are new leaders in Brussels, she argued Europe is against protectionism. However, she: - defended the lack of agriculture in the Trump-Juncker agreement as necessary for Europe’s continuity. -...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.