U.S.-Sino Tipping Point The Trump administration’s plan to increase the proposed Section 301 tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of imports from China is designed to get Beijing’s attention, and it did. Beijing says it will respond in kind. That could mean $100 billion in additional cost burdens on consumers in both countries and impose collateral damage on other nations. Mr. Trump is maintaining his gambit that the trade war will have more adverse impacts on the Chinese economy. China is willing to negotiate, but there will be no serious effort from either side until one or the other arrives at the conclusion that the situation has been pressed as far as it can, either politically, economically, or bot...
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.