World Perspectives

USTR Sleeps Too Much; Weird Trade Obligations; War Profiteering

USTR Sleeps Too Much With hearings before House and Senate trade panels over the next two days, USTR Katherine Tai suddenly says she has “serious concerns” about Mexico’s energy policies. She reportedly did not arrive at those “concerns” until pushed by members of Congress representing the energy sector. This slough-like approach to trade problems mimics the lag in U.S. national security policy responding to what was a clear threat from Russia in Ukraine. All of this should concern U.S. agriculture since it faces its own existential threats from Mexico and elsewhere. USTR should not have waited until 2022 to begin what Ambassador Tai says is “actively assessing” Mexico’s policies. Prior to a...

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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.

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