Export Trends Year-End USDA Data Shows Trade Winners and Losers Following delays caused by the 35-day partial U.S. government shutdown, USDA has now managed to update its reports regarding U.S. agricultural exports through the end of 2018. A look at the total figures reveal some surprising findings about which products have suffered from China’s retaliatory tariffs and which have continued to thrive. Interestingly, the data seems to suggest that certain U.S. states, perhaps for political reasons, have not seen their agricultural products suffer the loss of market access as much as others have. China’s central government did suggest last spring that its responses to the Trump administrations tariffs on its goods could be aimed...
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.