Who Not When The Biden Administration has received encouragement from Capitol Hill and agriculture groups to nominate a U.S. agricultural trade negotiator for USTR and now the Congressional Research Service has added to the pressure. Its latest Focus report opines that agriculture is such a contentious issue that the lack of a U.S. chief agriculture trade negotiator could have implications at the upcoming WTO 12th Ministerial conference in November. That assertion presumes that: 1) some progress on trade negotiations can be achieved at the Ministerial, and/or 2) that anyone nominated and confirmed on behalf of the U.S. would be a constructive influence. While history suggests that progress in Geneva seems doubtful, who is picked as the agr...
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...
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.