IPEF Reality President Biden’s launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is a confusing mess but is unlikely to be what the Chinese are calling “a strategy for destroying peace.” This CPTPP-lite plan talks about trade using the same language as CPTPP: “free, open, fair, inclusive, interconnected…high-standard…free and fair trade,” but the focus for increasing trade links is on nontariff barriers that are difficult politically for countries to remove and easy for them to restore. Especially when there is no mention of an enforcement mechanism. The Chinese say it is destined to fail but the bar for success if already is low. Moreover, it would effectively be meaningless if Singapore succeeds in...
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
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.