China’s announcement of a planned retaliation against the 25 percent U.S. tariff on $50 billion worth of its exports was released during the Tuesday night trading session for CME grains and soy complex. Although this should have been fully expected, the quickness of the response and the inclusion of U.S. soybeans on China’s target list seemed to catch the markets off guard. Soybean futures prices immediately plunged about 5 percent, and visions of a full-blown trade war caused U.S. stock market futures to fall hard as well. By the time Wednesday’s CME day session opened, cooler thinking began to prevail. Traders recognized that neither country’s new tariffs would be implemented immediately. Under the process involve...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.