Overwrought Reaction New Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai reinforced this week his reputation for hyperbole. He pointed to his country’s nuclear weapons capability as he warned policymakers in Washington against trying to suppress his country’s ambitions. He revealed hypersensitivity to two bills moving through Congress (U.S. Innovation and Competition Act and Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement Act) that basically increase the government’s investment in technology and encourage manufacturing. Their references to Taiwan and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong should not come as a surprise to Beijing and Ambassador Cui’s warning of “disastrous consequences” is particularly ove...
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.