U.S. trade officials have started the formal review process for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), inviting public comment ahead of next year's renegotiation of the pact. Under the process, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) will eventually be required to provide reports to Congress on its assessment of how the deal has worked, whether the U.S. wants to extend it, and any changes intended. Canada and Mexico will undergo similar processes to decide on the pact’s fate. USMCA went into effect in 2020 (replacing the North America Free Trade Agreement) as the high-level free-trade deal among Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. The terms of the agreement call for a mandatory joint review in July 2026...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.