Speaking Truth to Power In an interview with the Nikkei, Japanese Foreign Trade Council Chairman Shoei Utsuda astutely explained why his country should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He acknowledged that it would "inevitably entail pain," but it would catalyze deregulation and stoke domestic economic growth. Indeed, the primary benefit of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is said to be the way it forced reform of Mexico's domestic policies. Utsuda also correctly noted that Japan ending the use of nuclear power would expose the nation to the much larger risk of full dependence on volatile external markets for its energy needs. More Hollow Threats Karel De Gucht has been the EU's trade minister for nearly two yea...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
Key Takeaways: India is excluding sugarcane juice, sugar syrup, and B-heavy molasses from its 2026/27 fuel ethanol procurement program to protect domestic sugar supplies, potentially shifting additional demand toward corn and rice. India’s corn consumption for ethanol has surged from jus...
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.