The geopolitics of trade has been in the news and on the negotiating table since the first year of the Trump administration, all casting the U.S. as coming up short on changes in the global economy. This has involved the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), renegotiation of NAFTA, revising the trade deal with Korea, and a series of executive orders. The latter includes Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Barriers, detailing all discriminatory practices by our trading partners; Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits, identifying trading partners with which the U.S. had a significant trade deficit in goods in 2016; and Establishing Enhanced Collection and Enforcement of AD/CVD, addressing the $2.3 billion in antidumping...
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.