Transatlantic Not Dead President Trump avowed to help Maine’s lobster fishermen who confront high tariffs in China and Europe, in part due to his own trade war efforts. He threatened tariffs on Europe auto exports, and he offered financial assistance to the lobstermen, in addition to expanding their fishing area. But in the end, it was standard quid pro quo trade negotiations that will lift the EU’s barrier to American lobster. To help the lobstermen, the U.S. will have to lift its duties on European products like prepared meals, crystal glassware, surface preparations, propellant powers, cigarette lighters and lighter parts. Surprisingly not on the list is Spanish olives, which had to be high on Brussels’ ask list. ...
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.
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...