Changing Policy Focus Elections have consequences and usually that means a change in policy focus. Congressional Democrats complain that President Trump has played too light of a hand on countering human rights abuses, including unfair labor practices. Some of the same critics that decried characterizing the loss of steel and aluminum manufacturing capacity as a national security threat, now want to give that same categorization to climate change. Trumpers asserted that meritocracy rather than ethnicity or skin color should determine appointments but now Bidenists insist that symbolism is important. In that vein, the latest rumored possibility as USDA chief is Arturo Rodriguez, long-time leader of the United Farm Workers. Rodriguez checks...
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.
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...