The European Parliament voted earlier this week to reduce the target for biofuels from 10 percent to 6 percent by primarily cutting back on food crops as biofuels feedstock. The resolution also stipulates that by 2020, 2.5 percent of total biofuels are to be comprised of the so-called advanced biofuels that are derived from waste, seaweed and algae. It passed by a vote of 356-327. The European Commission proposed a cap of five percent last year, while the original language of the Parliament's resolution called for 5.5 percent. An industry counter-plan called for a target of 6.5 percent. The 6 percent target was a compromise that allows existing construction and plant expansion plans to move forward. Legislation will now go back to the 28...
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: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
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.