India this week blocked a perfunctory motion at the WTO to move surplus WTO funds from 2021 into 2023. All other WTO members agreed that the funds could be used to cover the organization’s “mandatory and unavoidable expenses.” Reportedly, other WTO members characterized India’s obstinance as reflecting abuse of the consensus-based decision making of the organization. India covers just 2.2 percent of the organization’s funding, a paltry $4.4 million, or 0.0007 percent of its $570 billion in world trade benefits. Granted, India is not the only member to “abuse” the consensus requirement. The organization lacks an appellate function because the U.S. continues to block it. And the dispute s...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Congress is moving forward with its FY 2027 spending bills, while also still working to address FY 2026 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is still in a shutdown. The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and passed its FY 2027 bill. The House bill prov...
The overarching concern for China is that the rising cost of energy will reduce global trade demand at the same time that countries are becoming more protectionist. Trump Visit to China President Trump’s visit to China is in just over two weeks, though some question whether the trip...
The House will vote on the farm bill this Thursday. This afternoon, the House Rules Committee is meeting to consider the rule for the House’s consideration of the farm bill, specifically determining which amendments can and cannot be offered. There are a number of controversial amendments...
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.