(What’s Left of) Our Economy: When Washington Slept on America’s Dangerous Dependency on Foreign Healthcare Products

Tags

active pharmaceutical ingredients, Bureau of Industry and Security, China, China virus, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, globalization, health security, healthcare, India, medical devices, national security, Office of Technology Evaluation, offshoring, pharmaceuticals, supply chains, surgical equipment, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Last week I wrote that no one in American politics, in either party, deserves blame for failing to anticipate the China Virus outbreak (in the sense of being ready for a genuine pandemic), and especially the Trump administration’s flawed response to its spread within the United States (as opposed to its timely decision on January 31 to start curbing inbound travel from overseas – initially from China). 

But there’s one big aspect of coronavirus-related public policy where potentially calamitous and avoidable mistakes have been made, and where identifying responsibility is essential (largely to prevent repetition). That’s the growth of America’s dependence on pharmaceuticals, their active ingredients, and other healthcare-related goods from foreign sources, especially from China.

It should have been obvious long before the virus broke out in Wuhan (at least as far as we know) that health security is national security, and that the blithe approval of trade and related policies that encouraged the offshoring of production in this crucial sector was as dangerous as the offshoring of crucial defense and defense-related (because so many inputs to weapons and platforms aren’t weapons themselves) products. Even louder alarm bells should have sounded once it became clear that a leading offshoring destination was China – a dictatorship that has challenged U.S. national security interests long before the rise of current leader Xi Jinping, and whose role in medical supply chains inevitably created the threat of supply cutoffs (as has recently been threatened in the Chinese government-controlled press).

And indeed American policymakers had all the evidence they needed as early as 2011. That’s when a small office at the Commerce Department called the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a report called – yup – “Reliance on Foreign Sourcing in the Healthcare and Pubic Health (HPH) Sector: Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, and Surgical Equipment.”

For many years, BIS’ Office of Technology Evaluation (OTE) has been issuing reports on sectors of the U.S. defense industry and other portions of the economy critical to the nation’s security and their use of foreign parts, components, materials, and other inputs whose availability shouldn’t be taken for granted. And fortunately, the Office and the various acts of Congress that have defined its mission have long understood that, as suggested above, national security-related industries are by no means restricted to those that turn out products that go bang and boom.

Notably, the study was requested by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which shows commendable foresight. And the main results make jaw-dropping reading today:

>“There is a significant amount of U.S.-based manufacturing for critical healthcare-related commodities.” At the same time, “There is…a very high degree of foreign sourcing and dependency for components, materials, and finished products.”

>“Exposure to supply disruptions is widespread, but many respondents consider it a cost of doing business in the healthcare industry.”

>As a result, “Only 34 percent of respondents are taking steps to reduce their exposure to foreign sourcing and dependency issues.”

>When it comes to the chemical ingredients for drugs, where heavy China dependency has attracted so much attention today, in 2011, pharmaceutical companies reported “difficulty limiting their exposure to foreign dependencies primarily because most of the APIs [active pharmaceutical ingredients] are produced outside the United States.”

>Medical device producers stated that they were “vulnerable primarily due to their reliance on other countries for electronic parts.” Japan was the main concern, due at least in part to the earthquake that year that disrupted many industries’ supply chains. But China has become an even more important supplier since then.

Sadly, however, the record also demonstrates that once the findings came in, no serious follow-through was undertaken.

OTE surveyed 161 companies – 70 pharmaceutical producers, 75 manufacturers of medical devices and surgical equipment, and 16 companies that turned out both kinds of products. Roughly three fourths of these companies were headquartered in the United States and roughly one-fourth were foreign owned.

All told, these firms produced 868 individual pharmaceuticals and 833 kinds of medical devices or surgical equipment. Of these, in turn, 290 pharmaceuticals and 128 types of devices and equipment were deemed by OTE “critical to effective healthcare services in the United States,” meaning “needed in various emergency scenarios.” The bureau also looked into the chemical ingredients and parts and components comprising these products.

As for the specific information sought, here it is:

“Survey respondents were asked to identify the pharmaceuticals and medical devices/surgical equipment they manufactured, integrated/assembled, and/or sold for use in the United States. For each product area selected, companies were then asked to provide the top three company proprietary products they make and the location of manufacture. Finally, companies identified, to the best of their knowledge, whether they were the sole U.S.-based manufacturer, sole global manufacturer, or not the sole manufacturer of each product.”

Some of the above results in greater detail:

More than 73 percent of the total surveyed companies depended on suppliers located abroad for at least one critical component, manufacturing material, or actual finished good. And the average number of such foreign-sourced goods per company surveyed was 11.4. Seventy-nine percent of pharmaceutical firms surveyed reported themselves in this situation versus 63.7 percent of the device and equipment manufacturers, and the average number of foreign-sourced products was 11.4 for the drug companies versus 9.8 for their device and equipment manufacturers.

Interestingly, even at this point, China loomed pretty large large in the picture at that time – especially for medical devices and surgical equipment. Its entities represented 13.8 percent of the total number of foreign suppliers to U.S.-based producers. For pharmaceutical companies, they accounted for 9.1 percent – less than leader Italy (15.7 percent), India (12.8 percent), and Germany (10.6 percent). Not that this result should be especially comforting, as India – a major global producer of generic drugs – has recently announced to restrict exports because it’s experiencing difficulty getting chemicals from China and (surprise?) wants to make sure it can provide for its own population.

The OTE survey, in other words, found that, in 2011, healthcare products companies operating in the United States relied on a diverse global supply chain. But significant vulnerabilities were reported, too. Principally, for pharmaceuticals, “there was no U.S.-based source for at least 65.5 percent of [total goods] identified by survey respondents.” And for medical devices and surgical equipment, the figure was at least 60.5 percent. More troublingly, in the device and equipment sectors, the greatest dependencies tended to be in complex products.

Moreover, when thinking about the safety of imported healthcare goods, keep in mind BIS’ finding that only 60.3 percent of the companies in total could identify the suppliers of their suppliers.

Nor were significant supply disruptions unknown by healthcare products companies. Thirty percent of these businesses reported experiencing at least one of these events between 2007 and 2010, 40 percent of these came from foreign suppliers, and 17.5 percent came from China – the biggest share for any single country. Both domestic- and foreign-origin disruptions lasted an average of 155 days. Nonetheless, these figures are surely way too low, as only 18.3 percent of responding companies said they tracked foreign supply disruptions.

Even so, the study oddly found that “Only 16.6 percent of companies foresee a risk of supply disruptions from outside of the United States” but that 29 percent “believed their company was vulnerable to serious and/or prolonged supply chain disruptions from events or dependencies outside the United States.” For pharmaceuticals, the top concern again was lack of API availability domestically.”

OTE made several policy recommendations to strengthen America’s health security. For example, various major relevant federal agencies should “further examine [the] survey data to prioritize the foreign sourcing and dependencies that could have the greatest impact on the healthcare supply chain in an emergency situation.”

In addition, these agencies, “in coordination with DHS and the Department of Commerce, should assess whether the use of Defense Production Act authorities, such as the Defense Priorities and Allocations System (DPAS), could provide the ability to rapidly expand or surge capacity of U.S.-based pharmaceutical and medical device/surgical equipment facilities to meet demand in an emergency situation.” As made clear, however, by the continued sky-high levels of the healthcare industry’s China and other foreign dependencies, the problem was promptly ignored.  

Such measures, along with many others in the trade, tax, and regulatory fields will no doubt be crucial to rebuilding the kind of domestic healthcare industry so many Americans and even their leaders finally recognize is essential. But if the nation really is seriously behind the idea that health security is national security, it’s going to need updated detailed information on foreign dependencies. In other words, time to put the OTE to work again.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Boeing Woes Finally Smack (Otherwise Encouraging) Fed Manufacturing Data

Tags

737 Max, aircraft, Boeing, China, China trade deal, Commerce Department, Fed, Federal Reserve, industrial production, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, manufacturing production, manufacturing recession, Phase One, recession, tariffs, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Federal Reserve’s report on January industrial production is out, and it not only finally makes clear the impact on manufacturing output of Boeing’s safety woes. It also strongly suggests that whatever (mild) recession industry has experienced is now over.

I say “whatever (mild recession)….” because several official measures of manufacturing output indicate that no downturn took place at all. For example, the Commerce Department’s GDP-by-Industry data series (which gauge factory production on a quarterly basis, not a monthly basis like the Fed) shows that manufacturing’s real gross output (analogous to the Fed’s inflation-adjusted manufacturing output figures) has not declined for two consecutive quarters during the entire current economic recovery. At the same time, it has registered several two-quarter (and longer) stretches periods during which manufacturing by this measure of inflation-adjusted output fell cumulatively.

Commerce’s tables for real value-added (a measure of manufacturing production that tries to prevent counting the production of inputs both as such, and as parts, components, and materials of finished goods) do report that industry’s production dropped between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, and between the first and second quarters of this year. Cumulatively, moreover, this production level was lower in the second quarter of this year than in the third quarter of 2018 – revealing that on this basis, manufacturing suffered a three-quarter downturn.

At the same time, according to this series, both by the consecutive quarters and the cumulative methodology, the manufacturing recession ended in the third quarter, when it topped both the second quarter level and the output figure for the third quarter of 2018.

And don’t forget: According to the Fed’s real manufacturing output figures, domestic industry’s price-adjusted production peaked in December, 2007 – i.e., it’s never pulled out of the slump that began with the Great Recession. Further, as I documented last month, the Fed’s data show that within this long manufacturing recession, several shorter recessions have begun and ended by the cumulative criterion.

So that’s some of context needed for the Fed finding that after-inflation U.S. manufacturing production fell by 0.09 percent in January. That represented its first sequential decline since October, and left year-on-year production down 0.72 percent. By that standard alone, therefore, manufacturing’s recession has continued.

At the same time, industry’s constant dollar production is up since last April – by 0.70 percent. It’s also up 0.34 percent since April, 2018 – the first full month when the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports went into effect,  and signaled that the President’s tariffs-heavy approach to trade had begun in earnest.

But the Boeing effect also needs to be considered as well. January saw a nosedive in aircraft and parts production of 1.07 percent sequentially, due to the company’s December announcement that production of its flawed 737 Max model would be suspended. The drop-off was the sector’s biggest monthly decline since the nearly 24 percent plunge in recessionary September, 2008.

I’ve wondered whether Boeing’s troubles had already been dragging down manufacturing output – given the company’s huge domestic supply chain, and given that the 737s had been grounded or banned from national airspaces nearly worldwide since March. But today’s report leaves no doubt that their effects have shown up. Indeed, the Fed explicitly stated that “excluding the production of aircraft and parts, factory output advanced 0.3 percent” on month in January.

So without the Boeing effect, January manufacturing output would be up cumulatively since last February – by 1.09 percent, not by 0.70 percent. And the increase since the advent of the main Trump tariffs would have been 0.74 percent, not 0.34 percent. These figures certainly don’t reveal a manufacturing boom – or even close. But given that even after the Phase One trade deal was signed with China, tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products remain in place (many of them levied against goods that are manufacturing inputs), they cast new doubt on how damaging the President’s trade war has been for domestic industry.

Boeing’s 737 Max crisis will end some day. But the company itself warned that it could last “several quarters” more. Moreover, Boeing’s troubles scarcely end with this ill-fated aircraft. In other words, the company’s woes will keep impacting both all U.S. manufacturing data for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it’s up to the nation’s economists and journalists (along with think tank hacks, no matter who’s funding them) to keep this in mind when judging the effect of the President’s trade wars and other economic policies. Let’s see how many can meet this challenge.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Manufacturing’s Not Only Decoupling from China

Tags

737 Max, aircraft, Boeing, China, Commerce Department, decoupling, GDP-by-industry, manufacturing, output, Trade, Trade Deficits, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Commerce Department’s GDP-by-Industry series is almost always overlooked by followers of the economy, and partly that’s the Commerce Department’s fault. Its updates are invariably a quarter behind, so it’s what analysts call a (seriously) lagging indicator that says relatively little about the more important question of what’s in store.

Nonetheless, even when they’re lagging, distinctive and detailed indicators can clarify long-term trends considerably, and that’s why I like GDP-by-Industry and track it so closely. Because it sheds lots of light on some of the most important economic and trade-related issues of the day – and especially on the impact of President Trump’s tariff-heavy policies. Specifically, the latest set of figures, which were issued January 9, reveal that during the Trump administration, the United States has continued to progress toward the worthy goal of reducing domestic manufacturing’s dependence on imports (and especially imports from increasingly hostile countries like China) for acceptable levels of growth. 

In other words, the People’s Republic isn’t the only country from which American manufacturing is decoupling. 

According to the new data, the latest year-on-quarter results show that between the third quarter of 2018 and the third quarter of 2019, U.S. manufacturing output (measured according to a gauge called gross value added) increased by 1.21 percent. That’s not much. But the manufacturing trade deficit during this period rose by only 2.55 percent. (Both figures are in pre-inflation dollars, because inflation-adjusted manufacturing trade figures aren’t available.)

Although this growth rate is lower than that achieved between the second quarter of 2018 and the second quarter of 2019 (2.03 percent), that figure was accompanied by a much faster increase in the manufacturing trade deficit (7.83 percent). The first quarter to first quarter results? Manufacturing production growth of 2.76 percent, and manufacturing trade deficit increase of 1.29 percent. That is, manufacturing output actually grew faster than the trade deficit. So from that standpoint, the third quarter result are disappointing.

They look even more disappointing when compared with the results from the first two years of the Trump administration. In 2017, manufacturing production also grew somewhat faster (3.99 percent) than the increase in manufacturing’s trade gap (3.16 percent), and in 2018, output grew much faster (6.23 percent to 3.96 percent).

These Trump presidency figures, in turn, have been much better than those reported for President Obama’s administration. Once the current economic recovery entered a normal phase (2011), the manufacturing trade deficit grew much faster than output ever year except for 2013.

So what’s the case for the latest third quarter 2018-third quarter 2019 figures representing continued progress? And why should anyone be happy with 1.21 percent annual manufacturing output growth no matter what’s happening on the trade deficit side?

Two answers suggest themselves. First, since the President began imposing tariffs in earnest (essentially, in April, 2018), importers have been “front-running” their purchases from abroad.  Their efforts to secure these deals before various sets of tariffs kicked in has produced several short-term distortions in the trade deficit in particular. Second, since the spring, Boeing’s safety woes have exerted a major drag both on domestic manufacturing output and on industry’s trade performance – since the aircraft giant has long been America’s leading exporting company.

Just one example of the difference Boeing has made: Between the third quarters of 2018 and 2019, the U.S. civilian aircraft trade surplus dropped from just under $10 billion to just under $6.5 billion. Civilian aircraft is of course the product category containing Boeing’s troubled 737 Max jet, and the plane was grounded worldwide, or banned from many national airspaces, starting in March.

The relationship between trade balances and production is never one-to-one, especially over relatively short time frames. And the matter becomes more complicated in sectors like aircraft, with its long lead times and generally large backlogs. But it’s difficult to believe that the 737 Max crisis and the narrowing of the aircraft trade surplus hasn’t impacted American civilian aircraft production and exports at all. (In fact, between those two quarters civilian aircraft exports, which are strongly related to output levels, sank by $2.75 billion, or nearly 22 percent.)

Moreover, for the purposes of comparing manufacturing output growth and the manufacturing’s trade deficit growth, the aircraft troubles are significant. Had the category’s trade performance simply remained the same between the third quarters of 2018 and 2019, the trade shortfall would have increased not by 2.55 percent, but 1.25 percent – less than half the rate. As result, during that period, manufacturing’s output (1.21 percent) and trade deficit would have grown at very nearly the same pace.

What does the future hold for this key ratio? On the one hand, civilian aircraft production is bound to decrease for the foreseeable future due to the 737 Max production halt announced by Boeing in mid-December. On the other, numerous signs indicate that industry overall has come out of the recession that dogged it for much of the last year and a half (and that by some output measures, never happened at all). Moreover, the Phase One trade deal signed by the United States and China last week could well reduce at least some of the tariff-related uncertainty that’s clearly slowed manufacturing-heavy capital spending decisions by American business in general, and certainly in manufacturing itself.

That looks like a modest case for domestic manufacturing continuing its longer term trend of becoming more self-sufficient while growing adequately – a development that makes major sense in a world that’s far more uncertain.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Manufacturing’s (Latest) Recession Looks Like It’s Over

Tags

aluminum, China, Commerce Department, Federal Reserve, Great Recession, industrial production, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, manufacturing production, metals tariffs, recession, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Let’s do something a little different this time in RealityChek‘s monthly examination of the Federal Reserve’s latest domestic U.S. manufacturing output figures – which came out this morning and bring the story through December and therefore through full-year 2019 (at least preliminarily).

Instead of focusing on the industries most seriously affected by President Trump’s tariff-heavy trade policies (mainly the metals tariffs, given big measurement problems with the China duties), let’s look at the question of whether manufacturing remains in recession – which has big, trade war-related implications because this Trump campaign is widely blamed for many of manufacturing’s recent weakness.

There’s considerable evidence that the answer is “Yes” – that industry’s inflation-adjusted production (the measure used by the Fed) is back in growth mode, though just barely.

But the question remains an open one. That’s partly because the answer depends on which baseline date you use for the start of the manufacturing recession, which unit of time you use (along with which particular manufacturing output gauge you favor).

Among that evidence tilting toward “Yes” – today’s Fed data.  Specifically, December’s 0.16 percent monthly increase in constant dollar manufacturing output means that, since June, such production is up. Now it’s only up by 0.04 percent. But since that’s a cumulative increase over the last six months (i.e., two consecutive quarters), the technical definition of recession no longer applies.

Or does it? The same Fed figures show that, between December, 2018 and December, 2019, after-inflation manufacturing output was down – by 1.26 percent. So the recession is still on, right?

Maybe. But use another baseline – April, 2018. As RealityChek regulars know, that’s the first full month in which significant Trump tariffs went into effect (on imports of aluminum and steel). Since then, though, price-adjusted manufacturing production has grown by 0.38 percent. This result, therefore, indicates that, although the President’s trade policies seem to have delivered a hit to domestic manufacturing, it was pretty negligible, and it’s already over (at least for now).

To complicate matters still further, as RealityChek reported last July, according to the Fed’s figures, manufacturing has suffered several recessions since the current economic recovery began (in the middle of 2009).  Indeed, as of this morning, it  still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession that began at the end of 2007!

At the same time, another set of U.S. government data support the conclusion that there has been no trade war-related manufacturing recession during the Trump years – or manufacturing recession of any kind.

These statistics come from the Commerce Department’s “GDP [Gross Domestic Output] by Industry” reports. They use the same measure used by the Fed for tracking manufacturing growth (or contraction), but they’re kept on a quarterly, not monthly, basis. As a result, these numbers aren’t issued as frequently.

Yet the latest results came out January 9, and although they stop at the third quarter of last year, they show that in real terms, domestic manufacturing under Mr. Trump never shrank on net for two straight quarters, much less over any longer time frame. Here are the quarterly change figures:

2Q 16-1Q 17 :+0.32%

1Q 17-2Q 17: -0.7%

2Q 17-3Q 17: +0.35%

3Q 17-4Q 17: +1.22%

4Q 17-1Q 18: +0.38%

1Q 18-2Q 18: +0.09%

2Q 18-3Q 18: +1.38%*

3Q 18-4Q 18: +0.38%

4Q 18-1Q 19: +0.43%

1Q 19-2Q 19: -0.38%

2Q 19-3Q 19: +0.67%

*those Trump metals tariffs began in this quarter

Indeed, what comes through loud and clear from them is that not only has there been no manufacturing recession on President Trump’s watch, but there hasn’t even been an output slowdown.

It’s always possible to point to the counter-factual – that is, in this instance, to try to figure out how matters would look without any Trump tariffs, or similar Trump efforts to transform U.S. trade policy. And it’s certainly conceivable that domestic industry would have fared even better had Trump abjured all tariffs.

But that’s not the only counter-factual. For example, what if the rest of the world had been able to deal with the pressure created by China’s steel dumping by dumping its own steel into the United States (which hasn’t happened because the Trump metal tariffs were global)? What if China itself had remained completely free to send artificially low-priced (because heavily subsidized) product into the US market? What if President Trump had kept the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP), with its wide open back door for imports with lots of Chinese content, while China remained under no obligation whatever to open its market to U.S. products? It’s easy to see that U.S.-based manufacturing could have gone on the critical list.

What’s certain, however, is that according to the most authoritative data available, claims of tariffs-led disaster for U.S. manufacturing have been either much ado about nothing, or much ado about very little. Could the coming months finally bear out the worst fears of cheerleaders for pre-Trump trade policies and other globalists? Of course. But that’s simply speculation, which counts much less than facts.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Data but Cloudier Skies on Trump’s Trade Policies and Manufacturing

Tags

Barack Obama, China, Commerce Department, exports, GDP-by-industry, imports, manufacturing, manufacturing output, manufacturing trade deficit, tariff front-running, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If only the Commerce Department’s data on gross domestic product (GDP) by industry didn’t come out on a basis timelier than once a quarter. For they’ve provided uniquely valuable information on how well the Trump administration is faring in its efforts to (1) reduce the humongous U.S. manufacturing trade deficit, and (2) reduce domestic industry’s reliance on imported parts, components, and materials, and boost total output and employment over the long-term by ensuring that more of the value in these manufactured products are Made in the USA.

More specifically, the data (whose latest edition came out this morning) shed light on the crucial question over whether the best business model for domestic manufacturing is that recommended by traditional trade theory, or whether an America First-type approach is more effective. The former, of course, holds that output of any kind is maximized by capitalizing on the principle of comparative advantage, and encouraging U.S.-based companies to use whatever inputs are made more efficiently abroad. The latter insists that such reliance on foreign inputs deprives the economy of the enormous output gains that are possible by encouraging growth in these very inputs.

Sadly, however, the reasonably clear analytical skies that permitted a reasonably clear verdict to be returned during the first two years of the Trump era in trade are rapidly clouding up, for a variety of reasons. And much of the growing confusion has been created by the President himself. 

During Mr. Trump’s first two (nearly) full years of the Trump administration (keeping in mind that the President didn’t take office until late January, 2017), his America First-style policies were looking pretty impressive. (It’s true that no new tariffs came on during the President’s first year. But he did put the kibosh on a major trade agreement signed by his predecessor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and made clear that levies were on the way.)

Since Mr. Trump actually began imposing tariffs in early 2018, however, the results have been harder to interpret for two main and related reasons. First, the administration’s tariff decisions have oscillated pretty dramatically, featuring not only steps to put in place, threaten, suspend, and remove such levies, but actual and threatened tariff rate changes on big chunks of imports (especially from China). Second, these policy swings have produced lots of “tariff front-running” – that is, U.S. importers speeding up their foreign purchases in order to avoid paying higher tariff-ed costs.

And this overall picture is exactly what’s been borne out by today’s figures (which incorporate revisions going back to 2014). The table below shows the new annual totals from 2011 (when the current economic recovery finished its early rapid bounce-back phase and settled into a more durable pattern) to 2018, The (slightly) revised numbers make clear that during the first two Trump years, domestic manufacturing did a much better job of generating healthy growth without ballooning manufacturing trade deficits (which reflect in part growing industry dependence on imported inputs) than during the previous Obama administration years.

The figure in the left-hand column represents U.S.-based manufacturing’s growth during the year in question (according to a gauge called “value added), the middle column represents the growth that year of the manufacturing trade deficit, and the right-hand column shows the ratio between the two growth rates (with the trade gap’s growth coming first). The higher the ratio, more closely linked manufacturing output growth is to the expansion of the manufacturing trade deficit. All figures are in pre-inflation dollars.

2011:             +3.93 percent           +8.39 percent            2.13:1

2012:             +3.19 percent           +6.27 percent            1.97:1

2013:             +3.36 percent          +0.77 percent             0.23:1

2014:             +2.93 percent        +11.78 percent            4.02:1

2015:             +3.72 percent       +13.65 percent             3.67:1

2016:              -1.19 percent         +4.66 percent                —

2017:             +3.99 percent         +3.16 percent            0.79:1

2018:             +6.23 percent         +3.96 percent            0.64:1

In other words, whereas during the Obama years, the manufacturing trade deficit nearly always expanded considerably faster than manufacturing output (and 3.67 and 4.02 times faster in 2014 and 2015), the first two Trump years saw both significantly higher output growth per se, and output growth that topped trade deficit growth. During 2018, moreover, numerous tariff were imposed, and not merely threatened.

This year, however, saw a major change. As shown below, the ratio of manufacturing output growth to manufacturing trade deficit growth returned to levels resembling the worst of the Obama years. And overall growth itself was feeble in comparison.

2Q 2017 – 2Q 2018:           +7.00 percent        +7.83 percent         1.12:1

2Q 2018 – 2Q 2019:           +2.03 percent        +7.27 percent         3.58:1

But here’s where the tariff front-running comes in, especially in the huge volume of trade with China – as made clear here. Unfortunately for trend-spotters, however, the administration’s success in fostering strong manufacturing output performance while weaning industry from imports won’t become any easier to identify anytime soon. The President’s China trade policies, after all, are likely to remain mercurial.  Further, the General Motors strike and Boeing’s safety problems are sure to distort the production numbers for at least the next quarter or two. Add a still-sluggish world economy that, along with foreign retaliatory tariffs, will keep weighing on U.S. exports, and you get uncertainty that could even dwarf that supposedly paralyzing American business investment.

Im-Politic: Claims that Trump Has Betrayed His Voters Economically Look Weaker than Ever

Tags

Commerce Department, election 2016, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politics, Populism, real personal income, Trump

President Trump has betrayed all the (tens of millions) of working class and/or rural voters who supported him in 2016 – that’s been one of the most popular claims by his opponents politics and journalism alike. (See, e.g., this post.)  Even so, the evidence to the contrary being either ignored or unknown continues to impress.

At the end of last month, I presented some data showing that lower- and middle-income Americans have seen their economic lots improve faster relative to those of upper-income Americans under the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency than under the last two years of Barack Obama’s.  The gap hasn’t been enormous, but it sure seems to belie the idea that Trump voters were duped by a phony populist. 

This morning, the Commerce Department supplied some more in the form of its annual report on how inflation-adjusted personal income rose or shrank in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia over the latest data year (in this case, 2016-2017).

A casual reading of the report doesn’t provide much encouragement for Trump supporters. For example, of the ten states that saw real personal income rise the fastest, six gave their electoral votes to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, and only four to Mr. Trump. Moreover, of the ten states that performed the worst when it comes to personal income improvement, seven were in the Trump column and only three in Clinton’s.

Further, on average, the Clinton states enjoyed price-adjusted personal income advances of 2.60 percent in 2017. The comparable Trump state figure was only 2.05 percent.

So why do I argue that the Trump betrayal contentions get the story largely wrong? Because I’ve compared these 2016-2017 results with those of the year before – which was of course the last year of the Obama presidency. And what it shows is what surely matters to voters more the single year results – whether their personal incomes fared better or worse in 2017 than in 2016. And when these numbers are presented, the economic case for Trump votes looks awfully strong.

To be fair, after-inflation personal income nation-wide was much faster in Mr. Trump’s first year in office than in Mr. Obama’s last – and by a whopping 2.6 percent to 1.1 percent! Even so, the Trump states saw the best rates of improvement. Indeed, of the thirty states whose electoral votes were won by the President (and adding in Maine, which split its electoral votes), price-adjusted personal income grew faster in 2017 in fully 25 (or 80.65 percent). Income growth slowed year-on-year in only four 12.90 percent), and the rate stayed the same in two.

For most of the 21 Clinton states (including Maine), real personal incomes grew faster in 2017 than in 2016, too. But the percentage was lower (71.43 percent). In five of those 21 states (23.81 percent), inflation-adjusted personal income increases slowed, and Maine remained flat.

All together, inflation-adjusted personal income growth accelerated from 0.63 percent between 2015-2016 to 2.05 percent in 2016-17 for the Trump states – a much faster rate than the 1.58 percent to 2.60 percent speed-up for the Clinton states.

Especially interesting – between the two time periods, no fewer than seven Trump states saw their personal incomes grow in real terms in 2017 after shrinking in 2016. Only one Trump state (South Dakota) experienced the reverse. By contrast, none of the Clinton states suffered after-inflation personal income drops in 2016 – but none has experienced such dramatic improvement, either.

These state-wide numbers aren’t perfect measures of personal incomes developments, and they’re even more problematic as clues to political behavior. After all, most states are big enough to be highly diverse economically, and wide gaps between rich and poor can be found inside many. It’s also important to note that the Trump states generally keep lagging the Clinton states when real personal income growth is looked at in absolute terms.

But trends almost always deserve to count more than snapshots. And although the new real personal income numbers hardly show that the Trump states have entered economic nirvana, they make the betrayal claims look flimsier than ever.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Evidence that Tariffs Front-Running has Stalled Trump Trade Progress

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aluminum, China, Commerce Department, imports, manufacturing, manufacturing output, manufacturing trade deficit, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, value added, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Yesterday’s post on the morning’s slew of manufacturing data released by the federal government could have included one more report: the Commerce Department’s latest sounding on gross domestic product by industry. And although this read on how different major sectors of the economy have been growing (or not) isn’t a market mover, it’s useful for analyzing the trade policy debate – for it enables calculations on how changes in the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit (a major concern of President Trump’s) compare with changes in manufacturing output.

Because this perspective provides the kind of context lacking when trade deficit increases or decreases are examined in isolation, it represents a much better way to judge whether the president’s trade policies are succeeding or failing according to one of his own main yardsticks.

And the verdict stemming from this new Commerce report? Progress that had been taking place during Mr. Trump’s tenure in boosting domestic manufacturers’ trade-related fortunes has come to a halt – probably because of what’s been called tariff front-running. That is, the President’s actual trade curbs and, doubtless much more important, his threats of additional curbs, have led overseas producers and their U.S. customers to boost greatly shipments to the American market in order to avoid paying as many of the levies as possible.

Consequently, as of the third quarter of last year (the latest data made available by Commerce), the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit resumed its long-term pattern of growing faster than domestic manufacturing production.

Specifically, between the third quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2018, U.S.-based industry increased its output by 7.23 percent according to a measure of growth called value-added (before inflation). During the same period, however, the manufacturing trade deficit jumped by 12.45 percent.

As made clear by my previous post on the subject, these results both contrast with the second quarter findings – when manufacturing production grew by 8.02 percent while the trade deficit widened by just 7.23 percent – and reversed a trend that began pretty much when the Trump administration did.

Just as clear – the first major Trump tariffs (on steel and aluminum imports) were slapped on in late March. So their arrival, along with China levies that began in early July and the much more sweeping duties imposed in late September and strongly hinted at in June, surely super-charged America’s import system.

Even with this step backward, it’s still evident that, so far during the the Trump years, domestic manufacturing is much less dependent on imports than before.  During the last year of former President Obama’s administration, for example, American manufacturing imports rose by 7.31 percent, while output expanded by only 4.53 percent – a pattern in place for most of the last twenty years.

But the real test of the Trump tariffs – at least concerning the manufacturing trade deficit – will come if and when U.S. trade flows settle into a new, post-tariff, normal, or one that follows the conclusion of the new, improved trade deals the President has promised. In that vein, the next chance to check these data will be April 19, when Commerce is scheduled to publish its fourth quarter and full-year, 2018 figures. Stay tuned!

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Puzzling New Glimpses into U.S. Manufacturing

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Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Commerce Department, durable goods, Labor Department, labor productivity, manufacturing, non-durable goods, productivity, real value-added, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Two important sets of economic statistics came out today that shed lots of new light on the health of American manufacturing. Unfortunately, little of it is especially encouraging. In fact, some of it’s pretty mystifying.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis issued its annual report on the growth rates of different sectors of the U.S. economy. The main manufacturing finding: Industry’s annual growth rate did pick up last year according to a measure called real value-added (which leads off the report, and which attempts to eliminate the double-counting of output that occurs when broader gauges fail to distinguish between final products on the one hand, and their parts, components, and other inputs on the other). Yet the acceleration from a 0.5 percent yearly expansion in 2016 to 2017’s 1.9 percent trailed that output increase of the economy as a whole – which improved from 1.5 percent to 2.3 percent. As a result, the economy became slightly more manufacturing light in 2017.

In addition, within manufacturing, growth leadership shifted dramatically. Whereas the non-durable goods super-sector outperformed its larger durable goods counterpart in 2016 (with the former’s real value-added improving year-on-year by 1.2 percent while the latter’s slipped by 0.2 percent), durable goods rebounded to a 3.4 percent annual growth rate in 2017 while non-durables’ real value-added inched up by just 0.1 percent.

The American economy’s overall growth leader in 2017 in real value-added terms? The mining sector, which jumped by 8.5 percent after plummeting by 13.3 percent the year before. The next fastest-growing industries were administrative and waste management services (4.9 percent), corporate management (4.6 percent), and information services (four percent even).

Today’s second data set (from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics) shows which sectors within manufacturing last year excelled in terms of labor productivity (the narrower of economists’ two main measures of efficiency), and which lagged and, once more, many of the results were surprising. (We already know that industry in toto had a dreary labor productivity year last year.) For instance, computer and computer peripheral equipment led the way last year, generating eleven percent more output per employees hour worked. But next came apparel knitting mills, at 10.5 percent, followed by agriculture, construction, and mining machinery at 10.4 percent, and cutlery and handtools at 9.4 percent.

The biggest productivity loser in 2017? Miscellaneous transportation equipment, where it nosedived by 11.5 percent. In ascending order, the next worst performers were electric lighting equipment (down 9.2 percent), sugar and confectionary products (down eight percent), and beverages (down 7.8 percent).

Other manufacturing sectors whose labor productivity worsened on year in 2017? Pharmaceuticals and medicine (down seven percent), metal-working machinery (which includes machine tools – and where labor productivity declined by 1.3 percent), communications equipment (down 2.2 percent), semiconductors (down 0.7 percent), motor vehicles (down 4.1 percent), and aerospace products and parts (down 3.1 percent).

And if you’re thinking that this list of productivity losers includes lots of so-called industries of the future, you’re of course right. Kudos also if you’ve noted that aerospace is the economy’s biggest trade surplus industry. It’s enough to instill a little humility in those of us who think we’re getting a handle on this gargantuan, complex American economy, or heighten for those who had some already.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: So Trump Voters Got Fooled Economically?

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Bureau of Economic Analysis, Commerce Department, personal income, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of the most common claims made this past year about President Trump’s favored economic policies is that many of their biggest victims have been or will be Trump voters. See here, here, and here for just a few examples.

So it’s more than a little bit interesting that the U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday released some data bearing on the issue, and they represent considerable evidence that exactly the opposite has been the case.

The data come in the form of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ (BEA) new figures on the annual growth of personal income by state in 2017. Combined with BEA’s numbers for the last pre-Trump year (2016), they show that 2017 was a considerably more prosperous year for the populations of the states that voted for the President than 2016 was.

According to the BEA, average personal income for all states rose by 3.1 percent in pre-inflation terms between 2016 and 2017 – a much faster pace than the 2.3 percent improvement for 2015-16. But most of the 30 states that awarded their electoral votes to candidate Trump, fared much better than that. Twenty three of them saw their state-wide personal incomes rise faster in 2017 than in 2016. Moreover, the income growth slowdown in the Trump states was minor except in Iowa (from one percent to 0.3 percent), Tennessee (from 3.7 percent to 3.2 percent), and Utah (from 5.2 percent to 4.4 percent). And obviously, Tennessee and Utah still performed better than the national average. (Maine split its electoral votes in 2016, and saw its income growth slow slightly as well.)

Another sign that 2017 worked out well economically for the Trump states. Nine of the 30 saw their incomes rise at a faster pace than the 3.1 percent national average, and Texas matched that average. In 2016, eleven saw faster-than-average income growth – but overall national income growth was a good deal slower.

And P.S. – if you adjust for population growth, and measure state income growth per capita, you get virtually the same results.

Of course, these state-wide averages can mask major inequality within states. Also, let’s not fall into the trap of crediting a President with all the good news made by the economy, and blaming him (or her) for all the bad news. In addition, the full impact of Trump policy changes can’t possibly have been felt so far. And partly as a result, “past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.”

But the BEA statistics so far suggest that Trump voters have gotten a pretty good deal so far from their 2016 political choice. Time for lots of the chattering classes at least to modify their narratives?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Welcome Signs of Healthier U.S. Growth

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business investment, Commerce Department, GDP, gross domestic product, growth, housing, inflation-adjusted growth, Obama, personal consumption, real GDP, Republicans, tax reform, {What's Left of) Our Economy

With the Commerce Department having issued last week its second read on U.S. economic growth in the third quarter of this year, RealityChek can update its ongoing examination of a major but sorely neglected economic issue: Is the quality of America’s growth improving or worsening? That is, has the nation managed to generate more output in ways that will make a repeat of the last decade’s financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession likelier? Or is it still relying excessively on the same unsustainable growth engines that made the crisis inevitable?

Happily, the news here is pretty good. Not earthshaking, to be sure. But the new statistics confirm that, so far during 2017, the nation has made gradual (though by no means adequate) progress toward former President Obama’s essential goal of creating “an economy built to last,” rather than one dependent on spending and housing bubbles.

As suggested by that last sentence, RealityChek measures the health of growth by looking at the share of the inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) made up of consumer spending and housing – the toxic combination whose bloat let to the previous decade’s near meltdown.

These two sectors’ combined share of the after-inflation economy peaked in the third quarter of 2005, at 73.27 percent. Last week’s GDP statistics pegged it at 72.85 percent – the lowest since the 72.70 percent in the third quarter of 2016.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, this figure rose to 72.94 percent, and increased again to 73.14 percent in the first quarter of this year. But since then, it’s dipped for two straight quarters – the first such sequence since the first half of 2014.

The big change hasn’t come from personal consumption. In fact, it’s share of real GDP hit its all-time high in the second quarter of this year: 69.60 percent. And the latest third quarter figure is a still elevated 69.43 percent. What’s happened has been a dramatic shriveling of the housing sector. It peaked as a share of real GDP in the second quarter of 2005 at 6.17 percent. The new GDP report pegs it at just 3.42 percent

Business investment – another pillar of solid, healthy growth – may have picked up in the third quarter, too. The quarter’s first estimate of GDP judged that such spending accounted for 16.33 percent of its 2.96 percent annualized constant dollar growth. That would have continued a string of declining relative importance that began in the second quarter. But the newest data revises the business investment contribution upward to 18.10 percent of a (higher) 3.26 percent annualized price-adjusted growth rate.

This hardly a sterling performance. And it hasn’t lasted very long. But these results are considerably better than those for 2016 (when business spending actually subtracted 5.33 percent from the year’s 1.49 percent real growth) or for 2015 (when such investment’s role was positive, but it fueled only 10.34 percent of that year’s 2.86 percent real growth).

In addition, they could set the stage for an interesting test of the Republican party’s fundamental tax reform strategy: Use tax cuts to put more money into the pockets of businesses and wealthier Americans to encourage the building of more factories and labs and other kinds of productive facilities at home. If the Republican approach survives Congress intact, the GDP numbers will be a big help in seeing whether its promise of producing better and healthier growth is kept.