Trump Effect Deborah Elms, Executive Director of the Asian Trade Centre in Singapore, writes in the Nikkei that President Trump’s demand that more countries give up their classification as “developing” countries will “be a legacy that long outlasts the Trump administration.” NATO members are obligated to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense in support of the security organization but only five Continental European nations do so. Defense spending by Germany, the largest economy in Europe, has been falling and instead of hitting 2 percent by 2024 will only spend 1.24 percent in 2023. However, after much naming and shaming by President Trump, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer now says the cou...
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.