(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trade Wars’ Impact on U.S. Manufacturing Output Still Clouded by GM and Boeing

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737 Max, aircraft, aluminum tariffs, automotive, Boeing, Fed, Federal Reserve, General Motors, General Motors strike, GM, household appliances, inflation-adjusted growth, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, metals-using industries, safety, steel tariffs, supply chain, tariffs, Trade, trade wars, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you read last month’s Federal Reserve report on after-inflation U.S. manufacturing output (for September), then there wasn’t much reason to read yesterday morning’s report on after-inflation manufacturing production (for October). For it described the same puzzling picture: American industrial performance clearly dragged down by the recently ended strike at General Motors (GM), but apparently completely unaffected by Boeing safety woes that have sharply reduced the aviation giant’s enormous exports.

The top-line figures released by the Fed were definitely gloomy. Last month, real U.S. Manufacturing output dropped by 0.62 percent sequentially – the worst such result since April’s 0.87 percent fall-off. Inflation-adjusted motor vehicle and parts output, however, plunged by 7.65 percent – its worst such performance since the 7.97 percent nosedive of April, 2011. Moreover, September’s previously reported 4.22 percent monthly automotive price-adjusted automotive decrease was revised all the way down to a 5.49 percent slump.

As the Fed observed, without the huge October monthly plunge in inflation-adjusted automotive output, the overall manufacturing production decline would have been just 0.14 percent – which obviously doesn’t show any strength, either.

But this is where the Boeing puzzle comes in. There’s still no sign of it in these Fed data. Most curiously, constant dollar production for aircraft and parts production rose a solid 0.57 percent on month in October. It’s down since March, when governments the world over began grounding its popular but now troubled 737 Max jet or banning it from their national air spaces.

But although Boeing’s exports have deteriorated sharply, too, the real output shrinkage has only been 1.48 percent since March, and since April (the first full data month since those March woes), after-inflation production of aircraft and parts has actually risen 1.15 percent. That’s considerably better than the output performance of domestic manufacturing as a whole during this period. And it’s much better than the output of key supplier sectors, although surely they’d been affected by the GM strike as well:

overall manufacturing: -0.19 percent

durable goods: -0.81 percent

primary metals: -1.62 percent

fabricated metals products: -0.60 percent

machinery: +0.37 percent 

It’s true that export sales and production don’t move in lock step for aircraft, or for any other industry.  But with foreign markets representing well over half of Boeing’s revenue last year, the former sinking while the latter keep growing isn’t easy to explain.

Something else that needs to be considered: Whatever the Fed data actually show, they’re not able to show much about how aircraft parts and production would have fared without the Boeing troubles. And they’re even less capable of showing such counterfactuals regarding how supplier sectors might have fared.

As for the impact of the trade wars, as usual, the consequences of the President’s tariffs on aluminum and steel are easiest to gauge, since they’ve been on the longest, and the major metals-using industries (the presumed leading victims) are so easy to identify. The table below represents the changes in their real output since April, 2018 (the first full month in which the levies were in effect), with the data for manufacturing overall used as a control group, and durable goods included because it’s the super-category in which most of the main metals-using industries are located:

                                          Old Apr thru Sept    New Apr thru Sept    Apr thru Oct

overall manufacturing:       +0.09 percent            +0.08 percent         -0.54 percent

durables manufacturing:    +1.25 percent            +0.87 percent         -0.32 percent

fabricated metals prods:    +1.85 percent             +1.63 percent        +1.42 percent

machinery:                            0 percent                 -0.96 percent         -0.81 percent

automotive:                        -3.92 percent             -5.53 percent       -12.24 percent

major appliances:               -2.19 percent            -2.03 percent          -9.14 percent

aircraft and parts:              +5.43 percent           +3.00 percent         +3.59 percent

In absolute terms, the results are still all over the place, and a GM strike effect is clearly evident for supplier industries like fabricated metal products and machinery. The interruption of GM production also seems to have aggravated – but not caused – the loss of relative momentum exhibited by the metals-users – meaning, that their production slowdown has gotten faster relative to that of overall manufacturing, even leaving out the cratering of automotive output. Interestingly, that momentum loss is now affecting aircraft and parts, too – whose September production figures were also revised down significantly.

Also noteworthy – the steep monthly production dive in major appliances in October. Yes, they’ve experienced their own product-specific tariffs (on large household laundry equipment) as well as the metals tariffs. Production of these products is pretty volatile, too. But the 7.26 percent real monthly output drop was the biggest since it plummeted 8.29 percent between September and October, 2013. Even stranger – the housing sector, which drives much appliance buying and therefore indirectly production – registered a major uptick in growth in the third quarter after six quarters of substantial decline.

As for the impact of the China tariffs on manufacturing output, since that’s much more difficult to gauge than the effects of the metals tariffs (e.g., because Chinese products have been used so widely, and to such varying extents, as inputs for so many manufacturing industries) it seems to make less sense than ever to examine them, given the possibility of the Boeing effect lasting months more.

And somewhat depressingly, I find myself wondering if that’s going to be true for following any manufacturing-and-trade-relevant data for at least a month or two more. (Though I’m sure I’ll keep soldering on!)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Manufacturing’s Recession Lengthens but Tariffs’ Role Stays Fuzzy

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aluminum, China, Fed, Federal Reserve, industrial production, manufacturing, metals, metals tariffs, metals-using industries, real output, steel, tariffs, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The modest momentum showed by domestic manufacturing in the previous two Federal Reserve industrial production reports disappeared in this morning’s edition of the monthly survey, as overall real manufacturing output in July fell month-to-month (by 0.36 percent) for the first time since April. Worse, the new data lengthened domestic industry’s recession, with inflation-adjusted production now off by a hair (0.004 percent) since April, 2018 – a stretch much longer than the two straight quarters of cumulative decline that qualify as a downturn for most economists.

This morning’s Fed numbers also provide some additional evidence that President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies have begun to erode manufacturing’s performance. But only some. Specifically, whereas in the first months following the imposition of metals tariffs in particular, metals-using sectors were handily beating the rest of manufacturing by every major metric, July’s industrial production numbers showed that their more recent relative performance continues to have been much more mixed.

As usual, nearly all of the best evidence concerns the impact of the tariffs on steel and aluminum, for reasons including their relatively long duration (April, 2018 was the first full month they were in place), and the ease with which metals-using sectors can be identified. And as usual, the table below presents the output data for these sectors since April, 2018, with the data for manufacturing overall used as a control group.

                                              April thru May      April thru June       April thru July

overall manufacturing:          -0.20 percent        +0.36 percent             0 percent

durables manufacturing:       +0.96 percent        +1.47 percent        +1.23 percent

fabricated metals products:  +1.34 percent         +1.89 percent        +0.95 percent

machinery:                            +0.86 percent        +0.57 percent         -0.57 percent

automotive:                           -1.88 percent         +0.60 percent        +0.43 percent

major appliances:                  -2.00 percent          -4.47 percent        -5.99 percent

aircraft and parts:                 +0.73 percent         +2.46 percent        +4.23 percent

These figures show that for three of the five major metals-using sectors tracked (fabricated metals products, machinery, and major appliances), constant dollar output has worsened compared with such production in manufacturing as a whole. Relative performance for automotive and aircraft and parts, however, has improved – as it has for the durable goods super-sector in which the metals users are located.

Keep in mind also that results for the major appliance sector also remain affected by a separate set of product-specific levies on large household laundry equipment that began in February, 2018.

In contrast with the metals tariffs, the first full month for China tariffs of any kind was August, 2018, and the set of goods involved was relatively small. Complicating matters further is the U.S. Trade Representative’s office’s practice of listing the dutied products according to a classification scheme that differs significantly from that used by the rest of the U.S. government to monitor most major indicators of economic performance – including industrial production.

And as previously noted, most of the Made in China products tariff-ed so far have been intermediate goods (parts, components, materials, etc.) whose use by American manufacturers varies widely. Therefore, the impact of tariffs on these products undoubtedly varies widely, too. Moreover, the number of Chinese goods facing tariffs has increased dramatically since last August. Not only were the levies extended to an additional $200 billion worth of such imports from China in late September, 2018, but these duties were raised from ten percent to 25 percent in May, 2019. (See this time-line for the specifics.)

All the same, here are results for a handful of sectors reasonably certain to have faced tariff pressure since last August. Each column measuring real output changes since last August.

                                         August thru May     August thru June     August thru July

overall manufacturing:     -1.09 percent            -0.55 percent           -0.90 percent

ball bearings:                    -2.20 percent            -2.46 percent           -2.27 percent

industrial heating equip:   -4.11 percent            -5.16 percent           -5.21 percent

farm machinery & equip: -7.51 percent            -6.53 percent           -6.91 percent

oil/gas drilling platform: +4.03 percent            +2.22 percent           -0.17 percent      parts

A greater percentage of these sectors (three of four) generated worse performance versus manufacturing overall than was the case for the metals-using sectors. But the sample size is so small, and the the uncertainties so considerable, that these more downbeat results should still be viewed with the utmost caution. Ditto for claims that the Trump tariffs are killing U.S. manufacturing.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Yellen Showing a Learning Curve on Trade?

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currency manipulation, Fed, Federal Reserve, free trade, free trade agreements, Jobs, NAFTA, offshoring, Trade, wages, Yellen, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Fed Chair Janet Yellen made some minor trade-related headlines (in the greater scheme of things) when she reportedly told the Senate Banking Committee that she opposed including enforceable disciplines on currency manipulation in trade agreements.

Actually, Yellen said no such thing. In response to a question from Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker following her latest semi-annual testimony to Congress on monetary policy, Yellen stated that she would “really be concerned” about such a move, but she by no means told the lawmakers anything like “Don’t do it!”

But what I found at least as interesting as those remarks were others in which she indicated – and not for the first time – that her views on trade and its effects on American labor markets have undergone some real changes since the 1990s – including the period when she served on President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Before this government service, Yellen joined many other leading academics in endorsing Congress’ passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Their joint 1993 letter predicted, “The agreement will be a net positive for the United States, both in terms of employment creation and overall economic growth. Specifically, the assertions that NAFTA will spur an exodus of U.S. jobs to Mexico are without basis. Mexican trade has resulted in net job creation in the U.S. in the past, and there is no evidence that this trend will not continue when NAFTA is enacted.”

In 1998, as a White House economist, Yellen wrote a journal article displaying similar confidence. Appropriate titled “The continuing importance of trade liberalization,” Yellen’s piece concluded a staunch defense of standard trade theory and its relevance to practice by declaring, “Trade liberalization might adversely affect a small fraction of American workers in their role as producers, but it benefits all workers in their role as consumers. The bottom line is that the benefits of increased openness and increased international trade are wide ranging: more efficient utilization of resources, faster productivity growth, higher quality goods, and lower prices, all of which raise living standards.”

After a decade-and-a-half’s worth of experience with NAFTA-inspired trade deals and related policies, Yellen’s tune sounds different. Last August, speaking to the annual central bankers’ conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Fed chair attributed sluggish wage growth during the current economic recovery to “changing patterns of production and international trade.” Indeed, she cited a paper commissioned for the conference that emphasized the toll taken on workers by “the offshoring of the labor-intensive component of the U.S. supply chain.”

In yesterday’s appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen made that latter point herself. (These remarks start a little after the 46-minute mark.) Again explaining the current recovery’s anemic wage inflation, she mentioned as one of the “longer-term structural factors” likely playing a role “the fact that many labor-intensive activities in the global production chain are being increasingly outsourced….” (If only some alert legislator would point out that many higher value links in these supply chains have been offshored as well!) And she expressed no optimism that trade-related developments would ever bring any relief to a trend that’s been at work “over the last decade or so.”

Yellen’s recent pronouncements on prospects for future increases in the federal funds rate makes clear she’s become acutely sensitive to matters of time and how its passage is described. She might consider that describing outsourcing helping to undercut wages over the last decade or so means that this process started right about the time NAFTA ushered in the current phase of U.S. trade liberalization policy.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Japan Goes All In

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asset prices, Bank of Japan, bubbles, currency, currency manipulation, dollar, Fed, Financial Crisis, free markets, Global Imbalances, investing, Japan, QE, stimulus, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, yen, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I was already having a hard enough time trying to figure out whether to focus this morning on three big data releases or on some of the other economic and non-economic developments crowding the headlines – and then the Japanese government rocked the economic world with two mega-announcements.

So the Labor Department’s Employment Cost Index, the Commerce Department’s survey of personal incomes and saving, and the Chicago purchasing managers‘ new monthly sounding all will have to take a back seat to the Japanese central bank’s unveiling of a massive new stimulus program, and the Japanese government pension fund’s announcement that it’s going to start investing considerably more in stocks both in Japan and around the world.

There’s no need to review the most obvious implications of this news. Just Google “Bank of Japan” and “GPIF” (Government Pension Investment Fund). You’ll quickly see that the former’s decision to buy many more Japanese government bonds, along with stocks and other financial assets, is expected to boost the prices of the such assets all around the world, further weaken Japan’s yen, and fend off another bout of deflation — with all the damage that would do to the Japanese and global economies. Financial assets will also get a major lift – all else equal of course! – from the Japanese government employee pension fund (the world’s biggest public sector investor) shifting its strategy to buying more stocks in Japan and abroad.

To me, the less obvious implications matter more, especially these two:

First, one of the biggest long run dangers of the unprecedented central bank stimulus programs adopted to contain the financial crisis is that investment capital around the world will be spent badly. The idea is that if investors know that the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank or the Bank of Japan will ride to their rescue with yet more credit if they make mistakes in allocating funds, the discipline that’s supposed to be one of the main virtues of free markets and capitalism will be badly eroded and possibly destroyed.

The crisis itself clearly was fueled in the first place by the glut of credit provided by the Fed in particular during the bubble decade. Super-easy money encouraged both Wall Street and homeowners to bid up the price of fundamentally unproductive assets like houses wildly beyond sensible levels. Government housing subsidies and implicit guarantees didn’t hurt, either.

The Fed doesn’t buy stocks but its Japanese counterpart has invested in exchange-traded funds and real estate investment trusts. Now the Bank of Japan will triple those purchases, along with boosting its bond buys. Is it remotely possible that this step will increase the efficiency of capital allocation in Japan, the United States, or anywhere?

In addition, the $1 trillion-plus Japan government pension fund, the world’s largest public investor, will more than double its holdings of Japanese and foreign stocks to 25 percent each. Of course, public pension funds have long been major players in financial markets. But U.S. funds hire private sector investment professionals to manage their portfolios. That hardly makes them perfect, but at least they have a history of responding in standard ways to market (and more recently, government and central bank) signals.

The GPIF’s portfolio, by contrast, is run by government bureaucrats. Moreover, they’re bureaucrats from the Japanese government, whose devotion to free markets has been historically difficult to spot. I’m someone who actually thinks that Tokyo has a good record of intervening in the economy, especially in manufacturing. But that doesn’t mean I have much confidence in it as a stock- or sector-picker – which of course is a different animal altogether from identifying approaches to nurture the long-term development of industries. Moreover, why would anyone hewing to the conventional wisdom about Japan’s allegedly disastrous penchant for “picking losers” believe that its leaders will now suddenly start making decisions that improve the efficiency of their own economy, let alone economies anywhere else?

The second less-than-obvious set of implications of Japan’s new policies concerns trade flows and trade policy. As widely recognized, the extra BOJ bond-buying has already brought the yen to roughly seven-year lows versus the U.S. dollar. The question Washington needs to ask is why it’s still pursuing a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal when the biggest economy involved in the talks so far outside the United States, which already has a strong record of protectionism, has just moved to cheapen the price of its exports and raise the price of its imports – and all for reasons having nothing to do with market forces?

Further, this latest instance of Japanese currency manipulation will likely affect trade flows more than Fed easing ever could – even if ZIRP and QE haven’t been accompanied by a stronger, not weaker dollar. For as defenders of this Japanese exchange-protectionism keep ignoring, the BOJ isn’t simply mimicking the Fed because monetary easing policies in a mercantile, production and export-led economy like Japan’s will always have fundamentally different – and inevitably more protectionist – effects than easing policies in a consumption- and import-focused economy like America’s.

Finally, even though Washington reportedly is more determined than ever to ignore foreign currency devaluations in the mistaken belief that its leading, and slow-growing, trade partners deserve such help, the much weaker yen is likeliest to spur similar moves – or the introduction of other beggar-thy-neighbor measures – in other mercantile, export-led economies in Asia, notably Korea and China.

Without a meaningful U.S. response – meaning a sharp turnabout in import- and deficit-friendly American trade policies – the inevitable results will be an even bigger U.S. trade shortfall, a consequently weaker American recovery, and reflation of the global imbalances that played such a prominent role in triggering the financial crisis to begin with. Unless, finally, this time, for reasons no one has yet identified, it really is different?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Entire World Will Regret Washington’s New “America Last” Economic Strategy

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Asian financial crisis, Bill Clinton, bubbles, currencies, exchange rates, Fed, Financial Crisis, Obama, recession, recovery, Trade, Trade Deficits, {What's Left of) Our Economy

America’s hard-pressed middle class, and those below it, got yet another big reason last week to believe that Washington’s main priority continues to be shafting them economically. According to a New York Times report, the President Obama and the Federal Reserve have decided to let the dollar strengthen against foreign currencies, enable America’s competitors to increase their price competitiveness over U.S.-origin goods and services, and allow slower growing foreign economies “to seek a little more prosperity — at the expense of Americans” by selling more in U.S. and global markets.

The Times reporters didn’t quote any U.S. officials by name – but they didn’t have to. When articles like this run on the first page of the business section of one of the world’s most influential newspapers, that means that the Obama administration and the Fed wanted this message broadcast to the rest of the world.

Not that undercutting American prosperity is the U.S. government’s main goal here. In fact, the article makes clear its belief that “the American economy needs less help than the rest of the developed world and…that the United States would benefit greatly from stronger global growth.” Moreover, according to the Times account, American officials are confident that this “would be true even if, in the short term, it makes the country’s goods a little harder to sell and jobs a little harder to find.”

They’re right to point out that long-term economic gains often require some short-term sacrifice. In fact, that’s a main justification for any form of savings. (Although it’s surely revealing that none of these officials is willing to make such statements for attribution and, more important, that the entire thrust of U.S. economic policy since the financial crisis struck has been to avoid the adjustments urgently needed after years of unsustainable borrowing and consuming.)

For all these inconsistences, however, there are two even bigger problems with this American strategy. First, however badly the rest of the world is faring, it’s doubtful that the nation can afford these measures. Indeed, the wider U.S. trade deficits that America’s leaders are evidently now seeking will further slow its already subpar levels of growth and hiring – and deepen the living standards stagnation that so many Americans have suffered for decades. Worse, nearly all the costs of Washington’s approach will be paid by the manufacturing sector – which not only dominates U.S. trade flows, but which still creates many of the nation’s best-paying jobs (especially for middle-skill, middle-income Americans), and leads the U.S. economy in productivity and innovation.

Second, as implied by the inevitable damage to productivity, innovation, and wage and salary income, Washington’s new strategy is bound to increase the economy’s reliance on financial gimmickry and debt-led growth – which former Treasury Secretary and chief Obama economic advisor Larry Summers has identified as a prime feature of secular stagnation.

These disastrous results can be confidently predicted because similar decisions have produced them before – and the harm they have inflicted has been anything but short term. In 1997, the onset of the Asian-third world financial crisis suddenly interrupted an unusually long period of global growth and financial stability. Yet the United States, despite decades of trade expansion, still remained independent enough of the world economy to weather the storm. Convinced that the American economy could easily absorb some short-term trade-related losses, President Clinton resolved to help Asian and other developing economies export their way out of recession – at America’s expense.

As he explained in late 1998, “I made a decision with the full support of my entire economic team that we would do everything we could to leave America’s markets as open as possible, knowing full well that our trade deficit would increase dramatically for a year or two. I did it because I thought it was a major contribution we could make to stabilizing the global economy and the economies in Asia.”

Only the long-term gains never materiaized and, in fact, the nation and world are still suffering from the fallout. The resulting surge in the American trade gap was fueled largely by the foreign factories U.S. and other multinational companies were encouraged to build by a string of NAFTA-like offshoring-focused trade decisions and deals made and avidly sought by Mr. Clinton. The capstone was China’s admission into the World Trade Organization in 2001 (shortly after he left office).

U.S. and foreign manufacturing production and employment underwent such profound structural changes that the trade deficit’s growth was barely interrupted by a brief early 2000s U.S. recession, and rebounded to historic heights once recovery began. But American leaders decided to help American workers keep consuming despite losing jobs and income to booming net imports by inflating interlocking housing and spending bubbles – and eventually triggering a near-global economic and financial meltdown.

Nowadays, a major increase in U.S. consumption required to sustain greater net imports would depend even more heavily on debt-creation than in the much more prosperous late-1990s. Consequently, Washington’s latest “America Last” strategy is likeliest to produce an even greater threat of re-bubble-izing both the U.S. and global economies. When they burst, therefore, as with the troubled aftermath of the last financial crisis, the beleaguered American middle class will hardly be the only victim.