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By Jonathan Cable and Koh Gui Qing | Reuters
European manufacturing appeared no closer to recovery last month while growth in Asia cooled, according to business surveys and trade data on Friday that pointed to ongoing weakness in global demand.
Purchasing managers’ reports from the United States due later, however, are expected to show growth picking up in the world’s largest economy, after a weak fourth quarter.
In China, factory growth slowed to multi-month lows. Sluggish domestic demand added pressure to already depressed foreign sales, two separate purchasing manager indexes (PMI) showed.
Worryingly for European Central Bank policymakers balancing the needs of 17 different economies, euro zone reports painted a picture of ongoing divergence, with a dire performance in France offsetting a return to growth in economic powerhouse Germany.
Markit’s Eurozone Manufacturing PMI was unchanged at January’s 47.9 last month, just pipping an earlier flash reading of 47.8, but holding below the 50 level that divides growth from contraction for the 19th month running.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, and Ireland (OTC BB: IRLD – news) were the only two countries in the 17-nation bloc to see growth. PMIs from Spain and Italy showed activity in their factory sectors deteriorated again with the situation worsening in Italy.
The euro zone output index, which feeds into the Composite PMI, a broader gauge of the economy due out on Tuesday, sank to 47.8 from January’s 48.7.
“Most of it is driven by Germany. Germany has outperformed the rest of the euro zone for quite a while now and that divergence is going to persist,” said Evelyn Herman at BNP Paribas (Milan:BNP.MI – news) .
In other upbeat news German retail sales grew at the fastest monthly rate in more than six years in January, rebounding from a deep fall in December, confirming signs it has turned the corner after a dismal end to 2012.
But unemployment in the currency union hit a new high in January of 11.9 percent, official data showed, and the PMI data pointed to factories reducing headcount for the thirteenth month.
Some 44 out of 55 economists polled by Reuters said the European Central Bank would have to step in and buy bonds from its struggling members.
Inflation among the countries using the euro fell to 1.8 percent last month, according to official data released on Friday, below the ECB’s two percent target ceiling and giving them room to ease policy.
That said, only a handful of the 76 economists polled by Reuters this week predict the ECB will reduce rates from their current record low of 0.75 percent.
British manufacturing shrank unexpectedly in February and new orders dwindled, making it likely the sector will put a drag on economic growth in the first quarter in a country at risk of sinking into a triple-dip recession.
Chances are rising that the Bank of England will rekindle its asset purchase programme next week and the PMI data coupled with figures showing mortgage approvals for home buyers dropped in January will only increase those odds.
FRAGILE CHINA
China’s official PMI from the National Bureau of Statistics eased to 50.1 after seasonal adjustments in February, the weakest reading in five months and just above the 50-point level separating growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
A second PMI issued by HSBC (LSE: HSBA.L – news) fell to a 4-month low of 50.4 after seasonal adjustments, off January’s 2-year high and in line with a flash, or preliminary, reading late last month.
But the bigger-than-expected retreat in the purchasing managers’ indexes does not signal China’s economy is slipping into another slowdown, analysts said. Instead, they show China’s growth recovery this year would be mild, as widely expected.
The Lunar New Year holiday, China’s biggest annual holiday and widely observed across much of East Asia, fell in February this year making it harder to draw firm conclusions, even though the data was seasonally adjusted.
“Today’s data point to a stabilisation of economic activities in coming months, not a strong recovery of growth,” said Jian Chang, a Barclays (LSE: BARC.L – news) analyst.
Tim Condon, head of Asian economic research at ING in Singapore, argued China’s economic data in January and February has “a lot of noise” due to the festive season. “When it settles down we expect the data will reveal that industrial production is growing around 10 percent,” he said.
In South Korea, trade data showed a sharp fall in exports, while a PMI report from last year’s emerging market investor favourite Indonesia showed a slight improvement in manufacturing overall, but a fall in new export orders.
(CNN) — Forget the applications like video and audio streaming, or the built-in speakers. The most noteworthy feature of Google’s new Nexus Q device may be this: It’s made in the United States.
When Google rolled out the device at its developers conference in San Jose, California, on Wednesday, reporters noticed the words “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.” etched onto the bottom.
The gadget, about the size and shape of a Magic 8 Ball, is billed by Google as “the first social streaming player.” It can be connected to a TV, has its own speakers, and can stream music and video from the cloud as well as connect an Android tablet or phone with home electronics.
Google hasn’t played up its origin, even though the vast majority of electronics are manufactured in China or other countries where labor is cheaper than in the U.S. A Google spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment for this story.
But The New York Times reported Thursday that it had been given a brief tour of the plant, which it says is about 15 minutes from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, and that “hundreds” of employees appear to work making the Nexus Q. The tour was given on condition that the Times not report the factory’s exact location.
Written by: BBC North America editor, Mark Mardell
Drew Greenblatt is an enthusiast: proud of his company, Marlin Steel, and proud of the factory floor packed with state-of-the-art equipment.
I watch, fascinated, as a little white robot squeezes out a wire, putting kinks and bends in it as it emerges.
Then it hands it over to a slightly larger yellow robot, which holds it steady for a twist in the end before turning it over for another twist at the other end.
Oddly, I find this cutting-edge equipment rather cute and cartoonish.
The question is whether this endearing duo are merely the remnants of America’s industrial past or the sort of equipment that will make the USA world-beaters once again.
The factory floor space at Marlin Steel is being doubled and there is no doubt the company is doing well, prospering even, during the bad years. Continue reading “What Does the Future Hold for American Manufacturing?”
By Howard Wial @CNNMoney February 23, 2012: 5:34 AM ET
Howard Wial is a fellow for the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.
At first glance, manufacturing jobs would appear to be a dying breed.
The United States lost 6 million manufacturing jobs between early 2001 and late 2009. And despite small gains during the last two years, the trend in manufacturing employment for the last 30 years has been downward.
That has led some to argue that long-term job loss in the industry is inevitable. But our research shows otherwise.
There are two common versions of the “inevitability” argument. One holds that U.S. manufacturing wages are too high to be internationally competitive. The other maintains that manufacturing job losses are the result of productivity growth. Both arguments are wrong. Continue reading “How to Save U.S. Manufacturing Jobs”
Brian Sozzi, Contributor 2/16/2012
The grand theme I want to put on the table is the concept of onshoring, sometimes called reshoring, which is the bringing back of U.S. jobs from overseas supply chains.
U.S. businesses have started to realize that while workers in far away lands garner miniscule wages compared to their U.S. counterparts, having operations outside of the country can be a strategic disadvantage. The speed and structure in which information is consumed has caused U.S. consumers to demand top quality products and to want to buy them whenever they please.
Having a manufacturing plant domestically aids in the quicker movement of goods from design table to sales floor. Furniture maker Ethan Allen is great example of a manufacturer producing most of its products in the U.S. and doing customization for clients, setting itself apart from price-point focused competitors.
Corporate managers are simply getting over their infatuation with cheap international labor and analyzing the total costs of doing business in the U.S. compared to say, China or India.
There is a dollop of icing on the cake here as well. The topic of focusing on onshoring to boost employment levels seems to be an area of agreement between bickering Republicans and Democrats. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, for example, wants to zero out the U.S. corporate tax for manufacturers.
Anytime the major political parties agree on anything, even the slight thing, it’s cause to sit up and take notice from an investment standpoint. The Donkeys and Elephants may be a little apart on how to precisely shepherd along the corporate onshoring interest, but at least they are talking the same language. It’s high time they do find common ground if the following is to be reversed:
I have read a fair number of columns bantering about onshoring. Is it overhyped? Do we really need more jobs in the service sector U.S. economy? The debates are almost endless. Unfortunately, though, I have failed to stumble upon investment strategies to profit from onshoring, which has already begun to a certain extent, and could likely gain steam in the years ahead.
Buy-and-hold investors, this should be right in your wheelhouse: a highly probable future event to build positions around in companies with durable competitive advantages.
A few names that come to mind:
BLUE-COLLAR workers in fields like manufacturing — particularly when they make products on American soil — are again becoming a favorite subject for white-collar workers on Madison Avenue.
The trend was born of the economic worries that followed the financial crisis in 2008. Recently, it is gaining steam — appropriate, since the ads often use blasts of steam to signal something is being built — with proposals in Washington to offer incentives to encourage the location or relocation of factories in the United States.
“We continue to see very heavy emotional response to anything that would leverage against the bad economy,” said Robert Passikoff, president at Brand Keys, a brand and customer-loyalty consulting company in New York. Continue reading “This Column Was 100% Made in America”
