As USDA works on the details of a $15-20 billion relief package for agriculture, intended to mitigate the impact of China’s retaliation on the Trump administration’s latest round of tariff hikes, Congress is working on a broader disaster relief bill to cover hurricane damage in the Southeast, flooding/freezes in the Midwest and wildfires in California. The latter measure is part of the congressional leadership’s broader discussion regarding FY 2020 appropriations and raising of the federal debt limit. Congress will target a vote on the disaster relief package this week before breaking for the Memorial Day recess (24 May-4 June), but there is no guarantee of a deal. A vote can be expected in the Senate as Majority Leader M...
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.