Crop Life America Registers Strong Comments on MAHA Strategy
In a 12-page letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Crop Life America (CLA) outlined a number of issues for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy on pesticides to further “our shared goals of promoting children’s health and ensuring that pesticide regulatory...
Trade Negotiation Update; Miscellaneous
Trade Negotiation Update There were no shortages of eye-opening news reports this week and the notable one on trade late today was President Trump’s announcement that he is ending trade negotiations with Canada. Ottawa’s decision to impose a retroactive digital services tax on Ameri...
Input Costs Forecast to Rise, Led by Fertilizer
After rising sharply in 2022, input costs remain stubbornly high yet today. At the same time, the prices received for major crops like corn, soybeans and wheat have fallen by as much as 30 percent over the same period. In response to these economic headwinds, Congress stepped up thr...
Ignoring Margins; Trump Tariff Win
Ignoring Margins The U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights held a hearing yesterday on, Reducing Regulatory Burdens to Unlock Innovation and Spur New Entry and the meat packing industry was front and center. UC-Berkely Senior Fellow Doha Mekki co...
Trade Agreements Challenged; No Non-reciprocals; Miniature Meat Plant
Trade Agreements Challenged The 9 July deadline for countries to reach individual trade agreements with the U.S. is fast approaching and while the Trump Administration says negotiations are progressing, there are some high hurdles. Protectionists from India to Europe are pressuring their policy...
U.S. Juneteenth Holiday
The CBOT/CME markets and our offices will be closed tomorrow, Thursday, 19 June in observance of the U.S. Juneteenth holiday. Please note that the next Ag Perspectives will be published on Friday, 20 June. ...
One Big Beautiful Bill Unveiled in the Senate
The Senate Finance Committee and its chairman Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have unveiled their tax bill as part of budget reconciliation to extend the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. According to the Committee, the bill … prevents a more-than $4 trillion tax hike on American families a...
G7 Disappointments; Deregulation and Consolidation
G7 Disappointments The Israeli-Iran war stole the thunder of the G7 meeting in Canada and while President Trump said ahead of the conference that he hoped to achieve trade deals, only the UK’s Keir Starmer has managed an agreement. However, G7 members are moving closer to Mr. Trump’...
Selective Deportation; G-7 Outcomes; U.S. Has the Meat
Selective Deportation The New York Times credited USDA Secretary Brooke Rolins with persuading President Trump to leave undocumented workers in agriculture alone. It’s bad enough that the President’s most reliable voting block is also the most threatened by retaliatory tariffs, conc...
Immigration and Trade: Update on the Chaos
After ICE raids of businesses – with more to come according to Tom Homan – President Trump admitted that his strict immigration policies are negatively impacting at least the farming and hotel sectors. A recent television news story showed empty radish fields in California devoid of...
Outclassed; Unifying Food Safety; Inflation’s Real Issue
Outclassed In a nearly five-hour hearing before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins proved again that she is one of the most politically astute of President Trump’s Cabinet members. She was adept at responding to a wide range of questions, nearly all of the...
Calm Amidst Upheaval; Unilateral Impacts; Ethanol’s Rise
Calm Amidst Upheaval Data or surveys about attitudes or opinions are said to be “soft” data since they are emotive based and less reliable. Soft data in recent months had been signaling angst about the U.S. economy and Mr. Trump’s handling of it. Yet, hard data has reflected g...
New Meat Giant Created in Brazil; Most of Revenue from U.S.
While the MAHA report from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. still cites consolidation in the meat packing sector, Brazil’s competition regulator, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), has approved a merger of two major Brazilian meat processors,...
Trade Negotiations Ramp Up; CAP Rush; Europe’s Military and Agriculture
Trade Negotiations Ramp Up The big story involves U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators meeting in London this week. Discussions lasted three hours today and resume tomorrow but no one sees agriculture being involved in the talks. Instead, the focus is on export controls where Beijing is limiting...
USDA Trade Estimates Report Comes Under Scrutiny
USDA’s delay of its quarterly agricultural trade report, and exclusion of its typical explanatory text, raised concerns because the moves raised questions about the objectivity of the data. The bottom line is that the trade is uneasy about USDA statistics now. USDA data is considered a go...
Beyond the Report Headlines: Measuring Trump’s Effects
The BLS released the employment report this morning indicating that the U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, down slightly from April’s revised 147,000, but slightly above pre-report forecasts of 126,000. However, payrolls were revised downward an unusually large 95,000 for the prior two month...
Agriculture Front and Center; Confounding Farmers; Miscellaneous Fun; Farm Bill Fight; Feeding Gaza
Agriculture Front and Center It is notable that all the examples provided by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt of high foreign tariffs involved agricultural products. Her specific examples included, “50 percent from the European Union on American dairy, you have a 700 percent t...
Getting Tough; Abundance Debate
Getting Tough It isn’t just the U.S. judicial system offering up hurdles to President Trump’s trade war. It has been noted that different countries have taken different approaches in responding to the tariff war. Smaller southwest and southeast Asian countries have generally b...
TACO or Not; U.S. – Japan Relations; Reciprocal Trade Momentum; Nutritional Police State
TACO or Not Financial markets have again steadied following the renewed war of words between Beijing and Washington. The two competitors cannot agree on much and signals that Xi and Trump will talk this week may or may not be true. Meanwhile, more U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum kick in this...
Tariff Threats Escalation Again: China and EU
In May, the U.S. and China agreed to reduce import tariffs by a combined 115 percentage points, down to 10 percent. The agreement was intended to cool years of tariffs and trade conflict that came to a head on 2 April with the announcement of new U.S. tariffs. At the time, both sides indicated...
Sorting Through Tariffs
On 2 April, President Trump announced the U.S. will impose a minimum baseline of 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods into the U.S. as well as higher reciprocal tariffs on exporting countries that impose tariffs on U.S. goods. Countries that will see tariffs higher than the baseline 10 perc...
Trade Negotiation Hurdles; Bond Market Conflict; Companionship or Dinner
Trade Negotiation Hurdles U.S. and EU trade negotiators meet again tomorrow in a bid to reach an agreement by 9 July; there is a lot of skepticism about its relative success. Politico Europe reporter Camille Gijs notes that politicians in Brussels have no appetite to give the White House big co...
MAHA Targets Glyphosate
The seminal report on the state of America’s health, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report, focuses on the environmental exposure to pesticides in the food supply, which the report says is linked to developmental issues and chronic diseases. The report says that 40 percent of child...
U.S.-EU Delay Reckoning; BBB Fails Farmers; Optimal Tariffs
U.S.-EU Delay Reckoning Brussels responded quickly to President Trump’s threat to raise tariffs to 50 percent. But a renewed commitment to negotiate and finding a deal with the mercurial American leader are two different things. Some believe Mr. Trump wants specific purchasing commitments...
Memorial Day Holiday
Monday, 26 May is a U.S. holiday, the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 27 May. The WPI staff hopes everyone has a good weekend...
EU Non-Proposal; Miscellaneous
EU Non-Proposal The EU has drafted a trade proposal for the Trump Administration that appears to be more fluff than meaningful stuff. Brussels offers to follow international labor rights and uphold high environmental standards. The EU already does this and is therefore not a concession. It offe...
Crunch Time; Miscellaneous
Crunch Time The “Big Beautiful Bill” providing the tax cut extensions sought by President Trump is supposed to be passed by the U.S. House by Memorial Day. The President told House Republicans today that they should not cut Medicaid, and they should not raise the cap on deducting st...
Fake is Out
Health and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. wants to stop demand for fake food colorings and Americans are slowing demand for fake food products. The demand for plant-based milks skyrocketed in percentage terms just a few years ago. Farm state politicians rushed to regulate the use of the word...
I Don’t Care; Rebalancing U.S. – Japan Trade
I Don’t Care That is likely President Trump’s attitude toward the WTO General Council’s castigation of his tariff war. Understandably, WTO members believe the complete flaunting of its rules by the U.S. undermines the entire organization. Both China and the EU want the U.S. na...
Moody’s Downgrades U.S. Debt
On Friday, Moody’s downgraded the U.S, credit worthiness and warned about rising levels of government debt and a widening budget deficit, cutting its U.S, credit rating by one notch to AA1. Moody’s was the last of the Big Three agencies to downgrade the U.S. from a triple-A rating.&...
U.S. Agriculture Crisis
U.S. farmers’ export markets were challenging before the trade war, and they are not coming back. It is time for Plan B. The trade agreement still being negotiated with the United Kingdom will supposedly allow U.S. beef producers to fill up to 1.5 percent of the British market. Except the...
Policy Quick Hits
The following is a rundown of some key issues impacting agriculture: Reconciliation: The reconciliation bill passed through the Agriculture Committee on a party line vote, 29 to 25. All the amendments offered also passed by the same party line vote. The bill would cut the Supplemental Nutrition...
Pesticide Assault; WTO Attacks U.S.; African Future
Pesticide Assault The Wall Street Journal reported that RFK, Jr.’s intent to ban all pesticides is running into opposition from other officials in the Trump Administration. His critics worry that removing pesticides will drive up food costs and know that inflation is a key consumer concer...
Phase II Deal; EU Strategy; Mimicking EU
Phase II Deal U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that a phase-one deal may be a model for trade talks with China. It may be the only model that would help U.S. farmers. Brazil still has a price edge on soybeans, and even a 10 percent tariff is enough to price out U.S. commodities...
U.S. and China Agree to Cut Tariffs for 90 Days and Continue Negotiating
After weeks of Chinese denials that they were engaged in talks with the U.S on tariffs, the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China issued a joint statement this morning saying that they would rescind reciprocal tariffs for the coming 90 days. It included: ...
Trade Deal with UK
Yesterday, President Trump announced from the Oval Office a trade deal “in principle” with the UK, the first of its kind following the reciprocal tariffs imposed by the U.S. While details are still lacking, according to the Administration, the agreement includes increased market acc...
Crop Life America Registers Strong Comments on MAHA Strategy
In a 12-page letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Crop Life America (CLA) outlined a number of issues for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy on pesticides to further “our shared goals of promoting children’s health and ensuring that pesticide regulatory...
Trade Negotiation Update; Miscellaneous
Trade Negotiation Update There were no shortages of eye-opening news reports this week and the notable one on trade late today was President Trump’s announcement that he is ending trade negotiations with Canada. Ottawa’s decision to impose a retroactive digital services tax on Ameri...
Input Costs Forecast to Rise, Led by Fertilizer
After rising sharply in 2022, input costs remain stubbornly high yet today. At the same time, the prices received for major crops like corn, soybeans and wheat have fallen by as much as 30 percent over the same period. In response to these economic headwinds, Congress stepped up thr...
Ignoring Margins; Trump Tariff Win
Ignoring Margins The U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights held a hearing yesterday on, Reducing Regulatory Burdens to Unlock Innovation and Spur New Entry and the meat packing industry was front and center. UC-Berkely Senior Fellow Doha Mekki co...
Trade Agreements Challenged; No Non-reciprocals; Miniature Meat Plant
Trade Agreements Challenged The 9 July deadline for countries to reach individual trade agreements with the U.S. is fast approaching and while the Trump Administration says negotiations are progressing, there are some high hurdles. Protectionists from India to Europe are pressuring their policy...
U.S. Juneteenth Holiday
The CBOT/CME markets and our offices will be closed tomorrow, Thursday, 19 June in observance of the U.S. Juneteenth holiday. Please note that the next Ag Perspectives will be published on Friday, 20 June. ...
One Big Beautiful Bill Unveiled in the Senate
The Senate Finance Committee and its chairman Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have unveiled their tax bill as part of budget reconciliation to extend the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. According to the Committee, the bill … prevents a more-than $4 trillion tax hike on American families a...
G7 Disappointments; Deregulation and Consolidation
G7 Disappointments The Israeli-Iran war stole the thunder of the G7 meeting in Canada and while President Trump said ahead of the conference that he hoped to achieve trade deals, only the UK’s Keir Starmer has managed an agreement. However, G7 members are moving closer to Mr. Trump’...
Selective Deportation; G-7 Outcomes; U.S. Has the Meat
Selective Deportation The New York Times credited USDA Secretary Brooke Rolins with persuading President Trump to leave undocumented workers in agriculture alone. It’s bad enough that the President’s most reliable voting block is also the most threatened by retaliatory tariffs, conc...
Immigration and Trade: Update on the Chaos
After ICE raids of businesses – with more to come according to Tom Homan – President Trump admitted that his strict immigration policies are negatively impacting at least the farming and hotel sectors. A recent television news story showed empty radish fields in California devoid of...
Outclassed; Unifying Food Safety; Inflation’s Real Issue
Outclassed In a nearly five-hour hearing before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins proved again that she is one of the most politically astute of President Trump’s Cabinet members. She was adept at responding to a wide range of questions, nearly all of the...
Calm Amidst Upheaval; Unilateral Impacts; Ethanol’s Rise
Calm Amidst Upheaval Data or surveys about attitudes or opinions are said to be “soft” data since they are emotive based and less reliable. Soft data in recent months had been signaling angst about the U.S. economy and Mr. Trump’s handling of it. Yet, hard data has reflected g...
New Meat Giant Created in Brazil; Most of Revenue from U.S.
While the MAHA report from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. still cites consolidation in the meat packing sector, Brazil’s competition regulator, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), has approved a merger of two major Brazilian meat processors,...
Trade Negotiations Ramp Up; CAP Rush; Europe’s Military and Agriculture
Trade Negotiations Ramp Up The big story involves U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators meeting in London this week. Discussions lasted three hours today and resume tomorrow but no one sees agriculture being involved in the talks. Instead, the focus is on export controls where Beijing is limiting...
USDA Trade Estimates Report Comes Under Scrutiny
USDA’s delay of its quarterly agricultural trade report, and exclusion of its typical explanatory text, raised concerns because the moves raised questions about the objectivity of the data. The bottom line is that the trade is uneasy about USDA statistics now. USDA data is considered a go...
Beyond the Report Headlines: Measuring Trump’s Effects
The BLS released the employment report this morning indicating that the U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May, down slightly from April’s revised 147,000, but slightly above pre-report forecasts of 126,000. However, payrolls were revised downward an unusually large 95,000 for the prior two month...
Agriculture Front and Center; Confounding Farmers; Miscellaneous Fun; Farm Bill Fight; Feeding Gaza
Agriculture Front and Center It is notable that all the examples provided by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt of high foreign tariffs involved agricultural products. Her specific examples included, “50 percent from the European Union on American dairy, you have a 700 percent t...
Getting Tough; Abundance Debate
Getting Tough It isn’t just the U.S. judicial system offering up hurdles to President Trump’s trade war. It has been noted that different countries have taken different approaches in responding to the tariff war. Smaller southwest and southeast Asian countries have generally b...
TACO or Not; U.S. – Japan Relations; Reciprocal Trade Momentum; Nutritional Police State
TACO or Not Financial markets have again steadied following the renewed war of words between Beijing and Washington. The two competitors cannot agree on much and signals that Xi and Trump will talk this week may or may not be true. Meanwhile, more U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum kick in this...
Tariff Threats Escalation Again: China and EU
In May, the U.S. and China agreed to reduce import tariffs by a combined 115 percentage points, down to 10 percent. The agreement was intended to cool years of tariffs and trade conflict that came to a head on 2 April with the announcement of new U.S. tariffs. At the time, both sides indicated...
Sorting Through Tariffs
On 2 April, President Trump announced the U.S. will impose a minimum baseline of 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods into the U.S. as well as higher reciprocal tariffs on exporting countries that impose tariffs on U.S. goods. Countries that will see tariffs higher than the baseline 10 perc...
Trade Negotiation Hurdles; Bond Market Conflict; Companionship or Dinner
Trade Negotiation Hurdles U.S. and EU trade negotiators meet again tomorrow in a bid to reach an agreement by 9 July; there is a lot of skepticism about its relative success. Politico Europe reporter Camille Gijs notes that politicians in Brussels have no appetite to give the White House big co...
MAHA Targets Glyphosate
The seminal report on the state of America’s health, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report, focuses on the environmental exposure to pesticides in the food supply, which the report says is linked to developmental issues and chronic diseases. The report says that 40 percent of child...
U.S.-EU Delay Reckoning; BBB Fails Farmers; Optimal Tariffs
U.S.-EU Delay Reckoning Brussels responded quickly to President Trump’s threat to raise tariffs to 50 percent. But a renewed commitment to negotiate and finding a deal with the mercurial American leader are two different things. Some believe Mr. Trump wants specific purchasing commitments...
Memorial Day Holiday
Monday, 26 May is a U.S. holiday, the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 27 May. The WPI staff hopes everyone has a good weekend...
EU Non-Proposal; Miscellaneous
EU Non-Proposal The EU has drafted a trade proposal for the Trump Administration that appears to be more fluff than meaningful stuff. Brussels offers to follow international labor rights and uphold high environmental standards. The EU already does this and is therefore not a concession. It offe...
Crunch Time; Miscellaneous
Crunch Time The “Big Beautiful Bill” providing the tax cut extensions sought by President Trump is supposed to be passed by the U.S. House by Memorial Day. The President told House Republicans today that they should not cut Medicaid, and they should not raise the cap on deducting st...
Fake is Out
Health and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. wants to stop demand for fake food colorings and Americans are slowing demand for fake food products. The demand for plant-based milks skyrocketed in percentage terms just a few years ago. Farm state politicians rushed to regulate the use of the word...
I Don’t Care; Rebalancing U.S. – Japan Trade
I Don’t Care That is likely President Trump’s attitude toward the WTO General Council’s castigation of his tariff war. Understandably, WTO members believe the complete flaunting of its rules by the U.S. undermines the entire organization. Both China and the EU want the U.S. na...
Moody’s Downgrades U.S. Debt
On Friday, Moody’s downgraded the U.S, credit worthiness and warned about rising levels of government debt and a widening budget deficit, cutting its U.S, credit rating by one notch to AA1. Moody’s was the last of the Big Three agencies to downgrade the U.S. from a triple-A rating.&...
U.S. Agriculture Crisis
U.S. farmers’ export markets were challenging before the trade war, and they are not coming back. It is time for Plan B. The trade agreement still being negotiated with the United Kingdom will supposedly allow U.S. beef producers to fill up to 1.5 percent of the British market. Except the...
Policy Quick Hits
The following is a rundown of some key issues impacting agriculture: Reconciliation: The reconciliation bill passed through the Agriculture Committee on a party line vote, 29 to 25. All the amendments offered also passed by the same party line vote. The bill would cut the Supplemental Nutrition...
Pesticide Assault; WTO Attacks U.S.; African Future
Pesticide Assault The Wall Street Journal reported that RFK, Jr.’s intent to ban all pesticides is running into opposition from other officials in the Trump Administration. His critics worry that removing pesticides will drive up food costs and know that inflation is a key consumer concer...
Phase II Deal; EU Strategy; Mimicking EU
Phase II Deal U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that a phase-one deal may be a model for trade talks with China. It may be the only model that would help U.S. farmers. Brazil still has a price edge on soybeans, and even a 10 percent tariff is enough to price out U.S. commodities...
U.S. and China Agree to Cut Tariffs for 90 Days and Continue Negotiating
After weeks of Chinese denials that they were engaged in talks with the U.S on tariffs, the governments of the United States and the People’s Republic of China issued a joint statement this morning saying that they would rescind reciprocal tariffs for the coming 90 days. It included: ...
Trade Deal with UK
Yesterday, President Trump announced from the Oval Office a trade deal “in principle” with the UK, the first of its kind following the reciprocal tariffs imposed by the U.S. While details are still lacking, according to the Administration, the agreement includes increased market acc...