Trump administration officials meet with their Chinese counterparts the week of 7 January to begin trade negotiations. No one should expect a quick or easy agreement. As should now be transparent to all, Mr. Trump prefers total disruption as a negotiating style. In its ongoing effort to present itself as the “good guy” in the fight, China is initiating its third tranche of unilateral tariff reductions. These are not WTO-bound, meaning they can be raised at any time in the same manner that India raises and lowers its rates as a market management approach. China continues to use administrative hurdles to stymie imports. In fact, much of this just reminds the Trumpians of all that they see wrong in the global trading system. Indi...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
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.