U.S. manufacturing activity falls to its lowest level in more than 10 years

[enhanced_deficit]

Tariffs were supposed to help domestic manufacturing, what is going on?


Dow plunges 550 points as big tech shares lead the decline

Published Wed, Oct 2 2019


Equities were down on the second day of the fourth quarter after the Institute for Supply Management said U.S. manufacturing activity fell last month to its lowest level in more than 10 years.


The weak data sent the major indexes tumbling on Tuesday, the first day of the fourth quarter. The Dow dropped more than 300 points while the S&P 500 slid 1.2%, their biggest one-day drops since Aug. 23. Those losses were enough to wipe out the Dow and S&P 500′s gains for the entire third quarter. Both indexes gained 1.2% in the previous quarter.


https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/dow-futures-trump-trade-manufacturing-data-wall-street.html

[enhanced_deficit]

Anti 'quid pro quo' GOP-Adelson wing doesn't seem to catch a break these days. Not clear yet if BI has also turned on MAGA like Drudge, Foxnews or just an isolated article:



The Trumponomics experiment is failing before our eyes

Linette Lopez



Economic data is pointing toward a recession, and no one should be surprised.
Yes, it's late in our economic cycle, and that matters. But President Donald Trump's policies are also very much to blame here.
Trump promised to buck economic thought and go full protectionist. Economists warned him this would damage the global economy, but he didn't listen.
Feel free to walk by the White House and scream "I told you so!"
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories (https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet).

When Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States, he promised to launch an economic experiment.
Ignoring the past few decades of economic liberalization, multilateralism, and openness, Trump promised to close the economy, renegotiate our trade deals nation by nation, and refocus the US economy on a relatively small sector, manufacturing, which makes up less than 20% of the economy (https://www.businessinsider.com/manufacturing-share-of-the-us-economy-2015-12).
To some, that experiment was a refreshing turn from the steady plod toward globalization that Americans have experienced for the past 50 years. To others — especially to economists — this was folly.
Protectionism, as experts well know, is bad news (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-steel-policy-hurts-americas-friends-2017-6). They reminded Trump that steel tariffs have only brought the US pain (https://www.businessinsider.com/bush-steel-tariff-impact-2017-7) — but Trump slapped them on our allies anyway. He was warned about his tax policies (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-proposes-tax-holiday-2017-8); about disrupting the North American Free Trade Agreement (https://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-america-saved-nafta-2017-5), our trade deal with Canada and Mexico; about ripping up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal forged by the Obama administration and supported by members of both parties; and about confronting China alone. But Trump did it all anyway.

Voila, America

Here we are, three years into the Trump administration's experiment, with a recession rapping at the door of the US economy. How do we know?


The pesky yield curve keeps inverting, showing us that investors are worried about what's around the corner for the US economy.
For the first time in a long time, Wall Street waited with bated breath for one number, from the ISM services survey, which told us that 80% of the US economy had slowed to levels unseen since 2016 (https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/us-service-sector-growth-3-year-low-trump-trade-war-2019-10-1028574766).
The services contraction came amid manufacturing's slump (https://s2.washingtonpost.com/18a6fa8/5d95e471fe1ff67f9fe356c3/bG9wZXoubGluZXR0ZUBnbWFpbC5jb20%3D/15/80/9f86e2578e1721f66d96e8498f0dd6db), which has been with us since last year and just reached its lowest point since 2009.
People have lost interest in buying big-ticket items like washing machines.
Chief financial officers across the country are feeling gloomier (https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/cfo-survey-q3-2019) than they have in three years.


https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-economics-experiment-failing-us-recession-2019-10

[Dr.3D]

Tariffs were supposed to help domestic manufacturing, what is going on?



https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/dow-futures-trump-trade-manufacturing-data-wall-street.html
You did hear?

It's contract time again.

The United Auto Workers is on strike against General Motors.

That's bound to affect the Dow.

[TheCount]

Tariffs were supposed to help domestic manufacturing, what is going on?

This just means that there aren't enough tariffs yet.
-Swordsmyth, probably

[tfurrh]

10 years ago? A bit further and that was when America was great.

[kpitcher]

10 years ago? A bit further and that was when America was great.

I'm on Donald Trump's mailing list, the pitch is now "Keep America Great".

That's it, we're great once again. Step 1) We elected Trump, Step 2) something something, Step 3) America is great

[oyarde]

In case nobody noticed , this " big tech " being spoken of is highly over valued .

[UWDude]

In case nobody noticed , this " big tech " being spoken of is highly over valued .

I noticed.
Earthquakes coming in tech land.

Facebook is advertising on Television now.

[Swordsmyth]

The economy is never smooth and there are many factors that affect it, Trump's tariffs are helping but they haven't had their full effect yet.
It took decades to hollow out the American economy and it won't be fixed in 2 or 3 years.

[enhanced_deficit]

Which part cuts spending and which party is big spender, lost track of it.

10/07/19
FEDERAL DEFICIT HIGHEST IN 7 YEARS
(https://thehill.com/policy/finance/464764-federal-deficit-estimated-at-984b-highest-in-seven-years)The federal budget deficit for 2019 is estimated at $984 billion, a hefty 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the highest since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday.The difference between federal spending and revenue has only ever exceeded $1 trillion four times, in the period immediately following the global financial crisis.
The deficit (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-10/55699-CBO-MBR.pdf), which has grown every year since 2015, is $205 billion higher than it was in 2018, a jump of 26 percent.

The CBO has warned that the nation's debt is on an unsustainable path. Higher levels of debt increase borrowing costs, make it harder for the government to battle economic downturns and increase the share of future spending devoted to paying off interest costs.

[Swordsmyth]

Which part cuts spending and which party is big spender, lost track of it.

10/07/19
FEDERAL DEFICIT HIGHEST IN 7 YEARS
(https://thehill.com/policy/finance/464764-federal-deficit-estimated-at-984b-highest-in-seven-years)The federal budget deficit for 2019 is estimated at $984 billion, a hefty 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the highest since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday.The difference between federal spending and revenue has only ever exceeded $1 trillion four times, in the period immediately following the global financial crisis.
The deficit (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-10/55699-CBO-MBR.pdf), which has grown every year since 2015, is $205 billion higher than it was in 2018, a jump of 26 percent.

The CBO has warned that the nation's debt is on an unsustainable path. Higher levels of debt increase borrowing costs, make it harder for the government to battle economic downturns and increase the share of future spending devoted to paying off interest costs.





Republicans cut spending when Demoncrats and RINOs aren't in the way:

https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Conspiracy-inflation.png

[Swordsmyth]

Which part cuts spending and which party is big spender, lost track of it.

10/07/19
FEDERAL DEFICIT HIGHEST IN 7 YEARS
(https://thehill.com/policy/finance/464764-federal-deficit-estimated-at-984b-highest-in-seven-years)The federal budget deficit for 2019 is estimated at $984 billion, a hefty 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the highest since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday.The difference between federal spending and revenue has only ever exceeded $1 trillion four times, in the period immediately following the global financial crisis.
The deficit (https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-10/55699-CBO-MBR.pdf), which has grown every year since 2015, is $205 billion higher than it was in 2018, a jump of 26 percent.

The CBO has warned that the nation's debt is on an unsustainable path. Higher levels of debt increase borrowing costs, make it harder for the government to battle economic downturns and increase the share of future spending devoted to paying off interest costs.





And if we are going to start putting irrelevant posts in this thread then we might as well include this:


The most surprising thing about the latest unemployment report isn’t that the rate dropped to the lowest level since December 1969. It’s that unemployment wasn’t supposed to get anywhere near that low under President Trump. At least, not if you believed mainstream Keynesian economists.
The economy created 136,000 jobs in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of businesses. The separate household survey, which is used to track unemployment, showed that the number of unemployed dropped by 275,000.
Not only did the job market pull 275,000 off the unemployment line last month, it pulled more than 100,000 who had dropped out of the labor force back into the job market.
This is good news, but it continues to confound mainstream economists, who solemnly predicted at the start of Trump’s administration that we faced a “secular stagnation.” Any talk of strong economic growth was a fantasy.
When the economy started to outperform expectations, liberals shrugged it off by claiming that the upturn in growth was all baked in the cake when President Obama was president.
That is false.
We can get a sense of the true impact of Trump’s economic policies by comparing the actual results since he took office to the forecasts made at that time. What did economists think the economy would be like if nothing changed over the next 10 years in terms of tax rates or regulatory policies
For the purpose of comparison, we used the Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year economic outlook released in January 2017. The CBO’s economic forecasts tend to mirror the consensus of other economists.
The results of this comparison are stark.

https://i2.wp.com/issuesinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-05-at-11.20.13-AM.png?w=770&ssl=1

https://i1.wp.com/issuesinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screen-Shot-2019-10-05-at-11.20.29-AM.png?w=770&ssl=1


GDP growth has exceeded the CBO’s forecast in every quarter starting with Q2 2017. That includes the second quarter of this year, which saw 2% growth where the CBO had projected 1.5%.
As a result, the economy is now $590 billion bigger than it was supposed to be.
The CBO projected that unemployment would never get below 4.4%, and would start rising again this year. Instead, the unemployment rate fell from 4% at the start of the year to 3.5%. The current unemployment rate is now a full percentage point below the CBO’s forecast. That translates into 1.6 million more people employed than the CBO expected.
And, where the CBO had forecast a steady decline in the labor force participation rate – which measures what percentage of the working-age population is either employed or looking for a job – it has been climbing. The CBO projected it would go from 62.9% at the end of 2016 to 62.7% in the last quarter.
The actual figure for September was 63.1%.
Oh, and inflation has been running slightly lower than expected – which wasn’t supposed to happen either. A typical headline about the Trump economy was the one in the Wall Street Journal shortly after he won the election, which said, “Inflation and Interest Rates Forecast to Rise Under Trump Presidency.”
If Trump were a Democrat, the news media would be shouting hosannas from every rooftop – instead of braying for Trump’s impeachment.
So what changed after the CBO issued its forecast? Trump reversed as many Obama-era policies as he could, as fast as he could. He halted pending regulations, rolled back more than $30 billion of existing rules, brought corporate tax rates in line with our competitors, fixed the worst elements of Dodd-Frank.

More at: https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/05/trumps-economy-is-doing-better-than-anyone-expected-heres-the-proof/

[enhanced_deficit]

Pennsylvania factory layoff foreshadows Trump 2020 troublesManagement decisions that might have slid by in more flush times can now push a business over the edge.


A worker sands at the Wood-Mode facility. The workers at the factory who used to just do one job are now asked to perform several.Mark Makela / for NBC News
Oct. 22, 2019, 8:43 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 22, 2019, 9:22 AM EDT
By Ben Popken
A manufacturing recession may already be under way in vulnerable swing states, challenging President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to deliver blue-collar jobs to his base.
Out of the 21 states with manufacturing job losses so far this year, some of those with the biggest percentage declines are states where Trump won by less than 5 percentage points. In Pennsylvania, the manufacturing sector lost 8,100 jobs. In North Carolina, it was 7,700, and Wisconsin lost 6,500 jobs.
Manufacturing jobs in states Trump won by less than 5 percent Change in jobs from January to September 2019.


State
Job losses or gains
Trump's 2016 margin of victory


Arizona
+6,500 jobs
3.5%


Florida
+5,000
1.2%


Michigan
-4,700
0.2%


North Carolina
-7,700
3.6%


Pennsylvania
-8,100
0.7%


Wisconsin
-6,500
0.7%


Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The closure of Wood-Mode, a 77-year-old family-owned factory in the farmland of rural Kreamer, Pennsylvania, was responsible for over 900 of the manufacturing jobs lost in that state this year, one of the most by a single company.
Wood-Mode was known for making the “Cadillac” of custom cabinets. Full kitchen sets could sell for over $100,000. Even dealers who were burned by the shutdown spoke glowingly of the unparalleled craftsmanship and finish.
But there had been signs over the years that Wood-Mode was having difficulty, including cost-cutting moves, layoffs and difficulty paying bills and obtaining materials.
Cabinet lines can be had at hardware chains for a few thousand dollars. Cheap Chinese imports nipped at the bottom of the industry’s pricing ladder. And though the machinery was kept in good condition, some equipment was older, and took more steps or time than newer equipment. Facing these and other headwinds, in 2017 Wood-Mode restructured its debt and accessed millions of dollars in new liquidity.
It wasn’t enough, but no one expected what came next.
Employees who had worked there for decades were given minutes to leave. Partially completed cabinets were left on the floor of the 1.3 million-square-foot facility.



"I put 22 years in and naively thought I would be there forever," said Michele Sanders, a former Wood-Mode employee.Mark Makela / for NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/massive-pennsylvania-factory-layoff-foreshadows-trump-2020-troubles-n1069341