The agriculture sector is under strong criticism for its harm to the environment. Multilateral disciplines on agricultural subsidies are considered too weak, but at least they exist. The damage caused by subsidized fishing is less obvious to the layman because it lies under the sea. One study concludes that two-thirds of the world’s 4,714 fisheries are compromised and there is the risk of a global fisheries collapse. Like other areas of government induced marketplace distortions, there are currently WTO negotiations to discipline fisheries subsidies. The goal is to conclude something by year’s end but there are many hurdles. Countries cannot even agree on the negotiating process, let alone agreeing on what is a fish and w...
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.