The current budget situation is only partially the result of the Republicans now controlling both houses of Congress. The White House says that the automatic annual sequestration cuts in play were "never intended to take effect." Intended is the operative word.U.S. congressional Republicans are pushing through appropriations bills that reflect their earlier consensus on an overall budget agreement, the first adopted by the national legislature in over a decade. Because of spending cuts and alternative priorities, not everyone is pleased with this "success," particularly the Obama White House. The Senate bill would wholesale move the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Department of Commerce. The White House objects even though...
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.