World Perspectives

Reading Trump, Again; Economic Focus; Market Signals; Iran and China Impacts

Reading Trump, Again The Trump administration’s announcement of a Section 232 investigation into automobile imports as a national security threat only reinforced the viewpoint of critics that he is a protectionist. However, the goal is not new duties on car imports but leverage to negotiate lower tariffs on U.S. auto exports. After all, he successfully got the Chinese to unilaterally lower their import duty on cars via trade threats. Too many, particularly in Europe, still do not understand his modus operandi. They continue to bristle over the instability and charge that he is disturbing established world order. After all, the system has worked well. Trump believes it has worked well for others, much better than it does currently fo...

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Q1 GDP Comes in Low, Interest Rate Expected to Stay High

The Q1 2024 GDP was 1.6 percent, well below the pre-report consensus expectation of 2.4 percent, and down from 3.1 percent in Q1 2023 and 3.4 percent in Q4 2023. That rate was the slowest in almost two years, dating back to Q2 2022.  Recall that in the 2 February Ag Perspectives report on...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.

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