Last Friday President Trump started an 11-day tour of Asia, the longest visit to the region since President George H.W. Bush was there in 1992. The five countries on the itinerary are Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and, the headliner engagement, China. The trip is very heavy on security issues, namely dealing with North Korea’s nuclear proliferation. However, trade is also high on the agenda. Notably, like the situation with Mexico, Trump is focused on automobiles coming from Japan, mentioning that “many millions of cars are sold by Japan into the United States, whereas virtually no cars go from the United States into Japan.” Japan has a $69 billion trade surplus with the U.S., and it is driven by automotive export...
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.