The election of Donald Trump is prompting a complete rethink of U.S. trade policy - some of it reasonable, and some of it not so much. New Trade Paradigm The election of Donald Trump is prompting a complete rethink of U.S. trade policy - some of it reasonable, and some of it not so much. Showing a complete tin ear to the election that just occurred, Kimberly Ann Elliott of the Center for Global Development wrote this week that since the American economy is larger than those of other countries, making trade agreements more fair will “require rebalancing in favor of our trading partners....” She went on to argue that “trying to renegotiate trade agreements already tilted in favor of the United States would yield little in the way of new gai...
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.