USTR Katherine Tai convened the first of what may be a series of meetings with key WTO counterparts on reform of the dispute settlement process (DSP). The U.S. first began blocking the appointment of judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body (AB) during the Obama Administration and has continued that position ever since. The U.S. has been protesting what it asserts has been the AB’s creation of new trade obligations through its rulings rather than strict adherence to the actual language of existing trade agreements. There is somewhat of a dichotomy between the American political view toward the WTO AB and domestic courts of law. American progressives tend toward what is called non-originalism with the U.S. Constitution, meaning...
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.