Donald Trump upended conventional trade policy in 2017, but there are critical deadlines in 2018 that will reveal the wisdom or calamity of his ways. While agriculture is one U.S. sector lamenting the direction that has been set, the sheer size of the American economy makes trade disruptions less impactful. China Washington laid the groundwork in 2017 for some major trade remedy actions against China in 2018. Some question whether Mr. Trump will really threaten the $600 billion trading relationship with the Middle Kingdom. American soybean growers certainly have much to fear, but others note that the U.S. is not alone in its criticism of Beijing’s mercantilist ways. The EU just issued a study on China’s “socialist market...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
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.