Presidents Trump and Xi spoke last Friday about the Phase One trade agreement between the two countries. It appears that in early January, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will meet to sign the agreement. There remains a lot of uncertainty in the market as to how China can fulfill its promise to purchase $40 billion (or more) worth of U.S. ag commodities as part of this agreement. That sum is a significant increase over the approximately $24 billion it purchased in 2017 prior to the trade war. First, the reported deal is a two-year commitment, so the margin increase in imports would be $32 billion over two years (an average of $16 bill per year – which may be a little less in 2020 and...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.