Values-Based Trading In the latest effort to block a trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur, activist groups Uplift and TASC issued a report claiming agricultural and climate practices in South America are “inconsistent” with EU values. Values-based trading now joins vaccine nationalism, digital discrimination, “national security,” and other spanners being thrown in the works of globalization. “Values” are a slippery slope. Nations and cultures have wildly varying standards on a plethora of issues that could be used as cause to block trade. Perhaps imports from the EU could be blocked because member states like Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania do not recognize gay marriage. Even the GATT/WTO could n...
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
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.