The U.S. drone strike on Major General Qassem Soleimani marked a change in U.S. policy toward Iran. For the past year or more, the Trump Administration has positioned its Iranian policy as a de-escalation of military conflict and an increase in economic sanctions, having pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement and placing additional economic sanctions on Iran. The airstrike hit was a major change which has destabilized markets, injecting uncertainty moving forward. Following are a few thoughts from WPI’s expert contacts and former colleagues who follow the Middle East and crude markets closely. First, the markets have been relatively complacent in response, compared to what could have been the reaction. Two likely reaso...
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.