Category Archives: commodities

EconoFact: “Threats to U.S. Agriculture from U.S. Trade Policies”

EconoFact, today:

The agriculture sector in the United States depends upon exports for its vitality. Sales of U.S. agricultural products abroad are responsible for 20 percent of U.S. farm income, supporting more than one million American jobs on and off the farm, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The three biggest buyers of American agricultural products are China, Canada, and Mexico. Yet trade with these three countries faces heightened uncertainty. The Trump Administration is in the process of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, which includes the option of exiting the deal altogether. In addition, the United States imposed a number of sanctions on our other trading partners, including China. These sanctions have spurred retaliation that has already harmed some agricultural exports.

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Trumpist Economic Discourse…and the Provision of a “Cliff’s Notes” Version

On reading my admonition to consult my paper with Oli Coibion, reader Ed Hanson writes:

Do you really have a problem explaining to those who can not follow your paper? I hope you do not teach undergraduate beginning economic courses. Unless. of course, your intention is to decrease economic understanding in the world. But then again, I suspect that exactly what you want, because only the economic illiterate and the power elite could support socialism.

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Interpreting Evidence on Forecasting Capabilities of Futures Relative to Other Methods

Despite provision of numerous references, reader CoRev writes:

… it’s a big IF that soybeans futures are LONG TERM predictors at all.

I find skepticism of forecasting capabilities usually justified. However, when that skepticism is not supported by any citations, I consider such skepticism self-serving. Hence, I am going to go step-by-step for those who are not familiar with econometric methods and assessment metrics, in the hopes of educating people about the challenges of systematic prediction. Here I use as an example soybeans.

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