All in Trade War The lack of a China-U.S. agreement on trade this past weekend in Beijing means that things will get worse before they get better. Each side’s goals are quite clear, and so the difference is in calculating the cost-benefit ratio of the trade war. The cost in terms of economic risks will have to increase. Delay would ordinarily favor the authoritarian regime rather than the democracy, but Donald Trump is not a normal western politician. His re-election in 2020 depends upon proving that he is the great negotiator. The former casino owner has all his chips on the table. China will use its administrative controls to hurt U.S. exports. There is never a good time for business uncertainty but there could be wor...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.