Early reactions to President Trump’s tariff war are as expected. Major foreign trading partners are expressing shock and assuring Washington that if there is no negotiated settlement, there will be an appropriate response. Domestic pundits emphasize this is a tax on American consumers and it will hurt the U.S. more than other countries. The latter implies the trade playing field is level though no one says it outright. One pundit pointed out that Americans are richer and implied maybe it was due to low tariffs, but never asked why do other countries keep their consumers poor with higher border measures? The global economic system is built on Americans importing a lot and so there will be pain. Some U.S. corporations are import d...
Key Market Insights Geopolitical Limbo: Geopolitical risk remained a key driver across global commodity markets today. President Trump stated that the Iran memorandum of understanding is not yet final and warned that military action could resume if negotiations fail. Both sides continue w...
Key Takeaways: Drought remains a major threat to global agricultural production, particularly in regions with limited rainfall and growing water scarcity. Commercially available drought-tolerant traits in corn, soybeans, and wheat have generally delivered modest yield improvements, limiting th...
Key Takeaways: Peace at last in the Persian Gulf? Over the weekend, the U.S. announced and Iranian officials confirmed a peace agreement, with formal ratification set for Geneva on 19 June. The announcement means the Strait of Hormuz is set to reopen fully and toll-free within 30 days.&n...
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.