Soda and Nutrition Programs USDA policy forced New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's imposition of a 16-ounce maximum cup size for soft drinks. Although no economic group is immune to obesity, it disproportionately affects the poor due to education and, some argue, as a result of the higher cost of vitamin rich foods that are concurrently less nutrient dense. Ten months ago, USDA rejected NYC's request to bar federal food assistance benefits (SNAP) for sweetened drinks, arguing practical concerns that it would be "too large and too complex" to manage. However, beneficiaries are already banned from using benefits to purchase cigarettes and alcohol. Instead, some argue that limiting the foods the poor can purchase smacks of paternalism:...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: The tariff burden rose sharply in 2025 and 2026: the effective rate on imports in HTS Chapters 1–24 increased from 1.53 percent in 2024 to 6.11 percent in 2025, before averaging 5.68 percent in January–August 2026. Headline rates tell only part of the story: exemptio...
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.