US Manufacturing Leads 2018 Growth For How Along?

Popular Economics Weekly

Graph: Econoday

US manufacturing looks to lead US economic activity this year. Why? Durable goods orders are growing incredibly fast, which are any products that last more than 3 years. This means aircraft and military goods orders, as well as appliances and other household items.

The blue columns of the graph track monthly order totals for durable goods which came in at $247.7 billion in February for a jump of 3.1 percent compared with January. The green line tracks shipments of durables which totaled $249.7 billion for a 0.9 percent increase which is sizable for this measure.

A subset of these factory orders are core capital goods, which boost labor productivity (meaning goods produced per worker hour) that has been lagging for years. Capital goods get the most attention as demand for these, from machinery to computers points to increasing fixed investment as businesses put new equipment in place to meet what they expect will be rising demand ahead.

Much of the strength comes from core capital goods orders (i.e., nondefense ex-aircraft that boost manufacturing productivity) where year-on-year growth, moved up nearly 2 percentage points to 8.0 percent, says Econoday. One caveat is that orders for primary metals surged a monthly 2.7 percent in a gain that may reflect, based on reports from regional and private surveys, rising prices for steel and aluminum.

 
That is a sign that the ongoing tariff negotiations mean rising prices for manufactured and consumer goods. Let’s not forget that most of the world’s trade agreements are centered on reducing prices by locating production of these goods where they are most cheaply produced—an economic concept called comparative advantage. Adding tariffs only adds to their costs, and American consumers with their limited incomes will suffer, as we import most of our consumer products.

But Americans working in industries that use steel and aluminum products will also be affected by rising prices, which has to reduce demand for their products, as well.

It's worth noting that these prices were already climbing ahead of possible steel and aluminum tariffs announced earlier this month. Fabrication orders rose 0.8 percent in February with machinery, which is at the very heart of the capital-goods group, rising 1.6 percent.

So it seems the cost of equalizing our trade agreements will on balance do little to correct our trade imbalance, because as products become more expensive they reduce demand for those products. That is, unless the salaries of US workers and consumers increase at the same rate. But then aren’t we back to the feared wage-and-price spirals of the 1970s that caused record inflation, and caused the Fed to raise interest rates to record levels in the 1980s?

The Fed might do the same if it sees such inflation in the cards again.  The way to increase demand for anything is to lower their costs, not raise them, which our current low-tariff trade agreements have been doing.

Harlan Green © 2018

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