Transatlantic Course Setting U.S. President Donald Trump and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed a new effort at a transatlantic trade agreement in Davos this week. Instead of leading with tariffs, Mr. Trump said he does not believe they will be necessary since “We expect to be able to make a deal with Europe.” Perhaps his first step should be complete transparency over what a deal between the two partners would look like, and why. The two parties can ultimately negotiate behind closed doors but building public understanding and ultimately obtaining support requires knowledge about the hurdles to trade and their remedies. Brussels intends to publish each member state’s National Energy and Climate Plan,...
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.