News from Washington continued to be the primary driver of CBOT price action again on Tuesday, with most of the day’s action coming from plans for new import tariffs from President-elect Trump. The other news from Washington is the USDA APHIS’ ban on live cattle imports from Mexico, due to the discovery of the New World screwworm in the southern part of the country. The tariff plans sparked selling in corn and soybean futures, the latter of which was blunted by a rally in soyoil futures, while the import ban sparked a second day of rallies in the cattle markets. Trading in corn and the soy complex was surprisingly heavy for Thanksgiving week due to the tariffs and funds made a concerted effort to exit corn longs they have recently acquired...
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.