Last Thursday was a big day for tax reform proposals in Congress. The House Ways and Means Committee passed its Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by a vote of 24-16 that day, and the Senate Finance Committee unveiled its version of tax reform. However, there are some key differences between the two on some big-ticket, politically important items. The Senate plan proposes seven marginal tax brackets of 10, 12, 22.5, 25, 32.5, 35 and 38.5 percent. The top rate would start for single taxpayers with taxable income of more than $500,000 and for married taxpayers jointly filing with taxable income over $1 million. In contrast, the House bill has four marginal tax rates. The Senate bill would eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes entirely, but t...
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.