Doha Still Choking: A WTO agreement at last week's meeting in Mexico to pursue trade facilitation assistance to developing countries is being fist-pumped as giving momentum to the broader trade negotiating effort, but it is not. The one upside was agreement to not just look at export value chains but import ones as well. However, the BRIC countries and other members pushed back against a call to fight protectionism, fearing it would be used to erode the concessions they grabbed to impose "special and differential" protectionism. All seemed to agree that open trade was an economic benefit, but Deputy USTR Michael Punke says when it comes to services, agriculture and likely other issues, "multilaterally we see no signs of having a productiv...
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.