TPP Angle Briefers on President Trump’s upcoming Asia trip are not saying that he will press for bilateral free trade agreements with Japan, Vietnam or the Philippines when he visits those countries. Instead, they are using the language that he will press for “a free and open Indo-Pacific region.” The language is curious since it infers a regional agreement, much like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that he rejected at the start of the year. Biodiesel Negotiations Indications are that Argentine officials are in Washington this week hoping to negotiate a suspension agreement on the supply of biodiesel. The U.S. imposed antidumping/countervailing duties on biodiesel imports from Argentina, and Buenos Aires hop...
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.