Two major U.S. sugar processors, U.S. Sugar and Imperial Sugar planned a merger, but the Justice Department is saying no. It warns that the duopoly would result in higher sugar prices in the Southeast. But higher sugar prices are the point of U.S. sugar policy. The government sets a floor price, not a ceiling, and then limits imports to keep the price artificially high. Given that the government also espouses the goal of limiting added sugar consumption to 10 percent of calories and Americans consume roughly 60 percent more than they should, higher prices would be an approach toward achieving a nutritional quality goal. At least if there is price elasticity in the consumption of sugar. U.S. per capita sugar consumption decline...
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...
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.