While U.S. relations with China are tense, due in no small part to President Trump’s harsh rhetoric and threats, U.S. grain and soybean producers have quite a large stake in trade with that country.With the world watching intently, U.S. President Donald Trump is hosting China’s President Xi Jinping at his Florida golf resort today and Friday. It will be the first meeting between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries and two largest economies. During his election campaign, President Trump was very critical of China, especially of its policies that have led to a huge bilateral trade imbalance in its favor. He accused China of forcing many U.S. manufacturing facilities to close and of “stealing” U.S. jobs by unfairly pricing i...
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.