The market is wagering that the U.S.-China trade war is escalated this Friday, and it may be right. China has pushed back against threats by President Trump that he will greatly increase tariffs that day if concessions are not made. Beijing would lose face if it were seen to be capitulating to his efforts at intimidation. President Trump has believed that the U.S. has more leverage in one-on-one negotiations with other countries, and he has sought to focus the benefits of such negotiations on Americans rather than sharing them with allied countries. His trade war with China may prove the opposite – that extracting reforms from Beijing would have been better leveraged had the effort been coordinated with Brussels and Tokyo. ...
What You Need to Know Today: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured reelection on Sunday, defeating right-wing Senator Flávio Bolsonaro despite trailing in the first round of voting. The surprise victory triggered a sharp selloff in Brazilian financial market...
The 2026 midterm elections are a week from tomorrow, but early voting has been taking place for weeks. At stake is control of Congress, including the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are contested, and the Senate, where approximately one-third of the seats are up for election. Farm...
Key Takeaways: Total U.S. crop acres (excluding hay) are forecast to expand fractionally this year due to greater oilseed crop and winter wheat plantings. One of the key drivers of this year’s crop outlook is input costs, and crops with a lower cost profile have an advantage in producers...
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.