Why Moo and No Squawk? Trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. may not end for a while yet. President Trump does not believe he has yet to achieve maximum discomfort on the part of Ottawa (or Brussels, Beijing or Geneva). And he does not believe he maximizes his side of the bargain until the other side cries uncle. His assertion that an agreement with Canada will be “totally on our terms” may have been “leaked” or been intentional, but it is typical Trump bravado and the attitude forces USTR Robert Lighthizer to be an even more brutish negotiator. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that dairy is not the only agricultural dispute in negotiations with Canada, but it is the biggest one. It ca...
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.