(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Recent Revisions Muddy the U.S. Manufacturing Picture Still Further

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Barack Obama, CCP Virus, China, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, Federal Reserve, inflation-adjusted output, manufacturing, manufacturing output, metals, real value-added, tariffs, Trade, trade policy, trade war, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As if the CCP Virus pandemic and its aftermath haven’t made gauging the real health of the U.S. economy difficult enough, the Federal Reserve late last month came out with its latest long-term (“benchmark”) revision of its domestic manufacturing production data that confuse the picture of industry’s recent status still further.

These revisions cover the 2017-2019 period, and as such, they’re especially important in gauging how U.S.-based industry fared under President Trump and the trade policy revolution he launched versus their performance during the second term of Barack Obama’s presidency and his standard trade policies. (As known by RealityChek regulars, these two time periods provide the best basis for comparison, since they came closest together during the same – expansionary – business cycle.) Moreover, because the revisions create a different baselines, they also affect the post-2019 period’s growth results for manufacturing, which include the pandemic period.

The Fed’s summary makes clear that the revisions show the inflation-adjusted expansion of manufacturing output during that Trump period to have been significantly slower than previously reported. That finding indicates that far from boosting manufacturing production, and particularly compared with the Obama years, the Trump tariffs (on steel and sluminum, and on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods from China) actually held it back.

Indeed, the revisions are so substantial that the picture they draw is a mirror image of the predecessor data – which showed that, at least before the virus struck, Trump-era manufacturing growth in real terms considerably bested the Obama-era performance. For that matter, the previous Fed numbers showed that domestic industry fared relatively well under Trump even counting the pandemic-induced recession year 2020.

Here are the results side-by-side for after-inflation manufacturing production growth in percentage terms:

                                                                   pre-revision               with revision

last four Obama years:                                   +2.45                          +1.30

Trump years pre-pandemic:                           +3.60                           -0.41

all four Trump years:                                     +2.13                           +0.82

So when it comes to growth – an especially important metric, since it’s tough to imagine creating many jobs without it – the new Fed revisions show that the second Obama term was better for U.S. manufacturers than Trump’s single term, CCP Virus or no.

Or were they? As also known by RealityChek regulars, the constant dollar output figures used by the Fed aren’t the only way to measure growth in manufacturing (or any other sector of the economy). Another is value-added, which attempts to avoid the double counting built into the standard output numbers created by their failure to distinguish between the value of the parts and components of a final product, and that of the final product itself. That’s why economists generally view them as the more revealing statistics. And in the above-linked announcement describing the revision and its methodology, the Fed says that the new numbers incorporate insights gleaned from the latest value-added figures (which are reported by the Commerce Department).

But when the latest version of these statistics are examined, they still show that domestic manufacturing grew much faster during the Trump years than during the final four Obama years. Here are the results in percentage terms when value-added is adjusted for inflation:

last four Obama years:                                    +3.88

Trump years pre-pandemic:                            +7.56

all four Trump years:                                       +9.22

One especially interesting feature of the above – the real value-added numbers show that U.S. manufacturing output actually grew further during the pandemic. In fact, even the revised Fed growth numbers show that industry has fared a good deal better so far during the pandemic than previously reported – with after-inflation production shrinking by just 0.92 percent between February, 2020 and this past April, not 1.42 percent.

Tomorrow the Fed will publish its first read on real manufacturing output for May. It will of course shed some more light on the status of domestic industry. But never forget that, given how the results will be revised not only several times during the next several months, but also about two years from now, the degree of illumination may be relatively modest.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New U.S. Manufacturing Data Bolster Case for Keeping Trump’s Tariffs

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CCP Virus, China, China tariffs, consumer electronics, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, exports, GDP-by-industry, gross domestic product, imports, manufacturing, Port of Los Angeles, recession, recovery, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As known by RealityChek regulars, throughout the CCP Virus period, I’ve been writing about how resilient the American domestic manufacturing industry has been, and how a good chunk of the credit should go to the Trump era tariffs. I’ve argued that they’ve rendered lots of imports – especially from China – much less price competitive, and created new opportunities for U.S.-based industry to sell to American customers.

With the release last Friday of the U.S. government’s latest “GDP (Gross Domestic Product) by Industry” data, this case looks ever more convincing.

The new figures bring the story up to the end of last year, and the key numbers entail the production and the trade deficit figures for the second quarter of 2020 (the first full quarter when the virus and related lockdowns and other mandated and voluntary economic activity curbs impacted economic data) and for the fourth quarter (the most recent numbers from this quarterly data set).

These new figures show that, during that period, according to an output measure called “value added” (a favorite of economists, because it seeks to eliminate the double-counting that inevitably results from including in manufacturing production levels both final products and all the parts, components, and materials that go into those products), manufacturing production increased by 14.32 percent. (This figure does not account for inflation’s effects, because the U.S. government doesn’t publish detailed inflation-adjusted data for the trade statistics we’ll also be examining.)

The comparable growth figure for the whole U.S. economy between the second and fourth quarter? Just 10.12 percent.

It’s true that the trade deficits for manufacturing and the whole economy rose strongly as well during this period. But manufacturing outperformed here as well, as its shortfall climbed by 24 percent, versus 24.46 percent for all U.S. goods and services industries combined.

That’s a tiny edge, of course, but any edge at all is pretty remarkable, especially given the massive pandemic-era popularity of the consumer electronics products sold so massively to Americans by China, and that most of these goods escaped the Trump levies. In this vein, it’s revealing that net imports of laptops, cell phones, and the like represented fully 22.07 percent of the second-to-fourth quarter manufacturing trade deficit’s worsening.

And even so, during this period, the manufacturing-dominated China goods trade shortfall increased by just 13.53 percent – a clear testament to the Trump tariffs.

It’s important to remember that many major U.S. services industries have taken outsized pandemic- and lockdowns etc-related hits because their business models depend on personal contact. But interestingly, between the first and second quarters, manufacturing output fell faster than total GDP – by 12.47 percent versus 9.47 percent on an annualized basis versus 9.47 percent. So industry had an unusually deeper hole to climb out of. And despite this challenge, whereas total U.S. current dollar output in the fourth quarter was still a bit (0.31 percent) lower than in the first quarter (the final full pre-CCP Virus-affected quarter), manufacturing value-added was fractionally higher.

There’s still a possible fly in the ointment – and a big one. Due to equipment and labor shortages, since late November there’s been there’s a big, growing backup in unloading ships laden with Asian imports at the Port of Los Angeles – a prime gateway for such commerce. And on a monthly basis, since November (and through January), U.S. goods imports from China are down 14.43 percent.

But underscoring the tariffs’ effects all the same: Goods imports from Vietnam, which is supposed to be a major winner from the U.S.-China trade conflict, dipped by just 3.93 percent during this period. And many Vietnamese products enter the United States through Los Angeles, too.

The manufacturing trade deficit remains way too high, and manufacturing’s value-added growth slowed dramatically last year – from an its all-time high of 13.4 percent between the second and third quarters to a mere 0.80 percent between the third and fourth.

But as the entire U.S. economy recovers from the pandemic due to vaccinations and the approach of herd immunity, as the lockdowns and consumer caution ebb, as more immense government stimulus kicks in, as aerospace giant (and traditional trade surplus star) Boeing recovers from its safety woes, as vaccine production booms, and as the Biden administration continues to keep the Trump tariffs in place, unless Washington makes some big policy mistakes, it seems tough at best to be a U.S. manufacturing pessimist these days.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Evidence of U.S. Manufacturing’s Tariff-Bolstered Resilience

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CCP Virus, China, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, imports, Jobs, Labor Department, manufacturing, recession, recovery, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I must confess that I’m more than a little confused. On the one hand, I read in The Wall Street Journal two days ago that the Trump administration “used tariffs to try to drive manufacturing back home, although growth in factory jobs stalled once the administration resorted to levies that drove up costs for many factories.”

On the other hand, I read in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that U.S.-based manufacturing is recovering “quicker than expected” from the CCP Virus- and lockdowns-induced American recession. Moreover, this stellar performance is taking place amid “higher costs for materials used in everything from kitchen cabinets to washing machines to automobiles.”

Stranger still: Unquestionably, among the cost drivers for these materials have been those Trump tariffs, especially on imports from China – which are not only wide-ranging (covering some $360 billion worth of Chinese-made products when they were imposed in phases), and steep (with most standing at 25 percent).

In fact, “stellar” really isn’t the best adjective for the manufacturing surge. Try “record-shattering.” For the Commerce Department’s “GDP by Industry” statistics show that between the second and third quarters of this year, manufacturing value-added (an output measure that tries to eliminate the double-counting that results from including in manufacturing production levels both final products and all the parts, components, and materials that go into those products) shot up by 13.34 percent at an annual rate. That’s not only never happened before. It’s never come close to happening before – at least since 2005, when the relevant data series began.

To be fair, this growth stemmed from the rubberband-like effect of partial virus-related reopenings of economic activity. Specifically, it followed a record 12.47 percent nosedive between the first and second quarters. But who can reasonably doubt that the immense scale of the Trump tariffs suppressed the amount of Chinese goods that could have satisfied this renewed demand, as they had done so typically in the recent past – especially since China’s export machine recovered exceptionally quickly from the People’s Republic’s own virus outbreak and massive shutdowns?

Moreover, who can reasonably doubt that the exclusion of these imports from the U.S. market more than offset whatever price increases the tariffs created? Because however much these levies are reducing companies’ earnings and profits, every sale lost to a China-based rival – whether at home or abroad – means much less in the way of earnings and profits. 

And this strong American manufacturing growth pickup has put an end to that short-lived manufacturing jobs slowdown. From April of last year (when the CCP Virus’ economic impact peaked on a monthly basis ) through December, Labor Department data show that U.S. industry’s payrolls are up by 820,000 – much faster growth than the 37,000 increase during the same period in 2019. Of course, the incredibly abnormal sudden stop-and-start of virus-era economies not just in the United States but the world over (and in largely unsynchronized ways) sharply limits the use of all such comparisons, because they have so relatively little to do with the economic fundamentals.

At the same time, though, it’s entirely reasonable to expect U.S. manufacturing production and employment to keep expanding as post-CCP Virus normality returns. And as long as the Trump tariffs remain largely in place, the prospect of a renewed Chinese import flood will be one major headwind that domestic industry won’t have to fear.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Evidence that Trump’s Tariffs Have Bolstered U.S. Manufacturers

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aluminum, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, GDP, gross domestic product, inflation-adjusted growth, lockdowns, manufacturing, metals, metals tariffs, real GDP, real value-added, recession, steel, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, value added, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As everyone knows, at least as of the final (for now) official third quarter growth figures just released, the entire U.S. economy remains in a severe recession thanks to the arrival of the CCP Virus and the subsequent tight curbs on business activity.

Less widely known:  A separate set of official figures released along with yesterday’s government release on third quarter gross domestic product (GDP) shows that, by the measures most closely watched (i.e, inflation-adjusted), domestic manufacturing never suffered a recession by one crucial definition – a cumulative downturn lasting at least two quarters. And can it be mere coincidence that the entire time, President Trump’s sweeping and steep tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods, and of steel and aluminum from most major foreign producers, have remained in place?

Below are the growth (and contraction) figures for the entire U.S. economy and for the manufacturing sector for the entire CCP Virus period so far – the first quarter through the third quarter of this year. They come from the Commerce Department’s data on four measures of output tracked by the folks who look at “GDP by Industry” and consist of gross output both pre-inflation and adjusted for price changes, and value-added (a gauge of production that tries to remove the double-counting that results from gross output’s inclusion of both inputs for products and services and the final products and services themselves) in pre-inflation and price-adjusted terms. All the non-percentage numbers are in trillions of dollars at annual rates.

                                                      1Q                2Q                3Q            1Q-3Q

v/a whole economy:                 21.5611        19.5201        21.1703    -1.81 percent

v/a manufacturing:                     2.3643          2.0537          2.3291    -1.49 percent

real v/a whole economy           19.0108        17.3025        18.5965    -2.18 percent

real v/a manufacturing:              2.1999          1.9629          2.2132   +0.60 percent

gross output whole econ          37.8268        34.2600         36.9425    -2.34 percent

gross output mfg                        6.1163          5.3334           6.0134    -1.68 percent

real g/o whole economy           34.2613        31.3989         33.4440    -2.39 percent

real g/o manufacturing               6.2038          5.6162           6.2089    +0.08 percent

Probably the most important of these results is real value-added, since its topline economy-wide numbers are identical to the inflation-adjusted GDP figures regarded as the most important measures of economic growth. And in real value-added terms, manufacturing output in the third quarter was actually slightly (0.60 percent) higher than in the first quarter. Manufacturing expansion has also taken place according to the real gross output figures, though it’s been marginal.

Also crucial to note although both pre-inflation measures show first-third quarter cumulative manufacturing downturns, they’ve been shallower in both cases than the economy-wide slumps.

It’s true that the virus and related shutdowns have more dramatically impacted the service sector when it comes to first-order effects – because so many service industries entail personal contact. But the case for the tariffs’ benefits for manufacturing looks compelling upon realizing that U.S. services companies are major customers of domestic manufacturers. So although the virus obviously crimped these markets, it seems that the tariffs preserved a good many of them by pricing out much Chinese and foreign metals competition.

One way to test this proposition, of course, would be for apparent President-elect Joe Biden to lift the levies while the pandemic keeps spreading. Unless powerful evidence comes in to the contrary, manufacturers, their employees, and indeed all Americans should be hoping this is a bet Biden won’t make.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: So Much for That Pre-Virus Trump Manufacturing Recession?

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, Barack Obama, election 2020, Federal Reserve, GDP, gross domestic product, gross output, industrial production, Joe Biden, manufacturing, manufacturing recession, real GDP, real value added, tariffs, Trade, Trump, value added

A funny thing happened when the U.S. Commerce Department released its latest report on gross domestic product (GDP) by industry last Wednesday: Most of the evidence that American domestic manufacturing suffered a recession – even a mild one, as widely reported – before the CCP Virus struck disappeared.

The new figures also reveal that President Trump’s manufacturing record before most of the U.S. economy was literally ordered closed due to virus-related fears looks even better than previously thought in comparison with that of the Obama administration – in which the President’s Democratic rival for the White House, Joe Biden, served as vice president.

Focusing on this pre-virus data is anything but grasping at straws – unless you think the CCP Virus and its impact will last forever. For manufacturing’s fortunes have been closely connected to President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies throughout his time in office because manufacturing is so thoroughly exposed to foreign competition both at home and abroad. And as this article (which featured unusual balance) made clear, recent evidence that industry had slumped last year – even before the virus’ arrival and the deep downturn it caused – was widely viewed as a major sign not only that the “trade war” was failing, and undermining Mr. Trump’s .broader determination to revive the sector.

Yet the new GDP by Industry numbers (which take the story through the second quarter of this year, and incorporate revisions going back to the first quarter of 2015 and which were part of a broader release of four different measures of manufacturing production) generally revised that recession away. So presumably, judgments about the effectiveness and impact of the Trump tariffs and similar trade decisions during normal economic times should turn much more positive.

Understanding that the federal government uses four different measures of manufacturing production is the key to understanding why those manufacturing recession claims now look largely mistaken, and why some uncertainty remains. The four measures are: gross output and inflation-adjusted (real) gross output, and value added and real value added. The latter two measures try to eliminate the double-counting in the gross output numbers that economists generally agree results from including in its results both the parts and components and other manufactured inputs of final products, along with the final products themselves.

As of now, the only one of these gauges that still shows a pre-virus Trump-era manufacturing recession (defined as two straight quarters of declining output) is current dollar (pre-inflation) gross output. According to these data, this downturn began in the second quarter of 2019 and continued through the end of the year – and of course into this year. But a recession doesn’t show up in any of the other measures, and its absence in the new real gross output figures is especially important, since that’s the measure that the Federal Reserve uses to measure manufacturing production in its closely followed monthly industrial production reports.

At the same time, those real gross output figures still leave one manufacturing production uncertainty remaining. For even though the Commerce Department’s tables, and their quarterly numbers, show no pre-virus Trump era recession by this measure, the Fed’s monthly numbers do. Specifically, they report three consecutive quarters of manufacturing production decrease last year – from the first through the third.

Yet the quarterly figures reported by the Commerce Department show that real gross output in manufacturing fell between the first and second quarters of 2019, but rose between the second and third before dropping again between the third and fourth. Even odder: Although these Commerce numbers show a weakening manufacturing output picture for the fourth quarter of last year, the Fed figures show a brighter one.

As for the comparison between administrations, here’s what the new numbers show for the two most comparable pre-virus periods (because they’re closest together in the same business cycle) – the last three years of the Obama administration and the first three years of the Trump administration. And they demonstrate that, whether due to Mr. Trump’s policies or not, industry performed considerably better during his watch. The Trump numbers are all the more impressive since 2019 was marked in part by major production woes at Boeing that greatly undercut the output numbers for the huge U.S. aerospace industry and its vast domestic supply chain.

last 3 Obama years first 3 Trump years

Gross output: -6.50 percent +12.71 percent

Real gross output: +1.40 percent +4.63 percent

Value added: +5.41 percent +11.72 percent

Real value-added: +2.33 percent +9.00 percent

This year, of course, has been terrible for domestic U.S. manufacturing. Between the first and second quarters, in real gross output terms it decreased by 1.03 percent at an annual rate between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, and by 9.47 percent between the first and second quarters.

Interestingly, put together, those are about the same as the declines suffered by the entire U.S. private sector (1.11 percent and 9.14 percent, respectively), even though manufacturing employment during this that period held up notably better than its overall private sector counterpart. During the first and second quarters of this year, the private sector lost 9.92 percent of its jobs, compared with 6.25 percent for manufacturing.

The GDP by Industry figures for the third quarter won’t be out until well after the election (December 22), so voters won’t be able to judge the full Trump manufacturing output record during the CCP Virus period. But from what’s known so far, it looks like something the President can point to during the rest of the campaign as a promise kept.

Im-Politic: On the Economy, Obama’s Record Looks Stronger than Trump’s

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Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, Employment to Population Ratio, GDP, gross domestic product, Im-Politic, Jobs, Joe Biden, Labor Force Participation Rate, labor productivity, manufacturing, non-farm jobs, private sector, productivity, real GDP, real private sector, real wages, recession, subsidized private sector, Trump, value added, wages, Wuhan virus

Not surprisingly, as this U.S. presidential cycle gets ever more intense, so has the debate over which boasts a better record in helping steer the nation’s economy: the Obama administration in which Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden served as second-in-command, or the incumbent Trump administration. I’ve just looked over some key data, and the verdict on most counts goes to the Obama administration. The margin of victory here isn’t huge, but it’s anything but razor thin, either. Moreover, any Obama edge is surprising given that the economy is President Trump’s major advantage in nearly all the polls.

All the same, here are the data. They compare performance during the last three full years of the Obama presidency and the first three full years of the Trump presidency. In my view, these time-frames deserve priority because they’re the ones closest to each other in the same expansionary business cycle, making apples to apples results much likelier.

The time-frames of course leave out the CCP Virus period, during which all the Trump numbers sank like stones. But if you regard the virus’ economic effects as purely artificial, having nothing to do with the economy’s fundamentals (as I do), then you want to strip them out.

Other methodological notes: Although the jobs-focused data come out from the federal government on a monthly basis, and therefore permit comparisons between completely identical (and virus-adjusted) three-year periods, the economic growth and productivity data don’t, so I show Trump results both through the first quarter of this year (affected by the shutdowns that began in March) and through the last quarter of 2019. In addition, regarding the monthly figures, because of the January 20 inauguration date, I peg the end of the Obama administration as January, 2017 and the beginning of the Trump administration as February, 2017.

And off we go, starting with overall employment, which consists of the Bureau of Labor Department’s U.S. employment universe – “non-farm jobs.”

Obama: +5.55 percent            Trump: +4.56 percent

But of course, non-farm jobs include all government jobs, and their status has much less to do with the economy’s underlying strengths and weaknesses than with politicians’ decision. So here are the numbers for private sector jobs.

Obama: +6.56 percent            Trump: +5.04 percent

So advantage Obama again. As RealityChek regulars know, however, not all private sector jobs are created equal. In fact, many barely deserve the term at all, because their circumstances depend so heavily on government spending. Healthcare is of course the leading example. Therefore, it’s useful to examine the employment results in what I’ve called the “real private sector”.

Obama +6.22 percent             Trump: + 4.63 percent

It’s another Obama out-performance. This string is broken when it comes to manufacturing jobs, however.

Obama: +2.38 percent           Trump: +3.78 percent

But Obama comes out ahead on inflation-adjusted wages for the entire private sector.

Obama +3.69 percent           Trump: +2.99 percent

And the margin is even bigger for real manufacturing wages.

Obama: +3.15 percent          Trump: +0.74 percent

One problem with looking at jobs gains or losses, or even the unemployment rate, is that these numbers don’t tell the whole story about the health of the labor market. To fill in the gaps, economists like to examine two performance measures called the Labor Force Participation Rate, and the Employment to Population Ratio.

The former, according to well regarded left-of-center economics think tank, reveals “the number of people in the labor force—defined as the sum of employed and unemployed persons—as a share of the total working-age population, which is the number of civilian, non-institutionalized people, age 16 and over.”

The latter, the same source explains, shows “the number of people currently employed as a share of the total working-age population, which is the number of civilian, non-institutionalized persons, age 16 and over.”

For what it’s worth, this reliable economics and finance website claims that the Employment to Population Ratio provides the best indication of job shrinkage or growth. So let’s begin there.

Obama: 58.8 percent to 59.9 percent       Trump: 59.9 percent to 61.1 percent

Pretty much a standoff.

As for Labor Force Participation:

Obama: 62.9 percent to 62.6 percent       Trump: 62.8 percent to 63.4 percent

Advantage, Mr. Trump.

As previously mentioned, the economic growth figures are only reported quarterly. Keeping that in mind, here’s how the two administrations stack up. The most commonly followed measure of the economy’s size and how it changes is inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP).

Obama: +8.19 percent           Trump: +5.75 percent

These data, though, include shutdown-y March, 2020. Taking the story only through the end of 2019 brings the Trump years’ performance up to 7.11 percent – but he still trails.

Interestingly, even including the first quarter of this CCP Virus-y year, Mr. Trump’s record is slightly better when another metric for economic growth is used – value-added. Its value lies in trying to eliminate the double- and even more overcounting that results when the of the parts and other inputs of a complicated product are counted both when they’re turned out individually, and when they’re contained in that final product.

Obama: +12.09 percent          Trump: +12.24 percent

The Trump presidency’s margin is even bigger in manufacturing value-added, and even including the first quarter:

Obama: +7.09 percent            Trump: +10.58 percent

Importantly, all the above value-added numbers are pre-inflation. After-inflation value-added data are tracked by the federal government, too, but they’re not even measured on a quarterly basis. Only full-year numbers are available. So since these make precise comparisons less possible, I’m skipping them.

Finally, here are numbers that hardly ever make the news, but might be the most important of all – the productivity data. These various measures of efficiency are widely viewed by economists are crucial to determining how healthy and durable economic growth is and will be, and therefore how strongly and for how long living standards can rise.

Results aren’t up-to-date enough for the broadest measure of economic efficiency – multi-factor productivity. But they are for the narrower measure, labor productivity – which gauges how much a single worker can produce in a single hour on the job – starting with the overall economy

Obama: +3.97 percent           Trump: +3.95 percent

And if you want to remove the first quarter of this year, because of the virus effect in March, overall labor productivity during the Trump period was up 4.02 percent

Labor productivity is monitored for manufacturing, too, and here are those statistics including the first quarter of this year:

Obama: -2.57 percent           Trump: +0.29 percent .

Oddly, if the first quarter is removed, the Trump years’ performance worsens a bit – and even falls to an overall dip of 0.09 percent. But however poor, it still tops the record of the Obama years.

So why are the Trump economy poll numbers so good? One possible answer: The final year of the Obama presidency was feeble by nearly all measures. Real gross domestic product advanced by only 1.70 percent. Total employment grew by a mere 1.64 percent, versuss 2.19 percent in 2014. National manufacturing employment actually dipped by 6,000 from 2015 levels. Real wage growth overall slowed from 1.26 percent in 2014 to 0.56 percent in 2016. And inflation-adjusted manufacturing wages performed scarcely better.

Moreover, as the New York Times article linked above makes clear, the public’s evaluations of the Trump economic record are incredibly partisan – often conflicting with a respondent’s actual situation.

It’s also possible and legitimate, as I’ve noted, to point to some important reasons for this Trump under-performance.  The President’s trade policies clearly disrupted national and global supply chains, and the consequent inefficiencies surely dragged on GDP and employment in the short term.  Boeing aircraft’s safety woes have undercut national economic performance lately, too.  But good luck to you if you think these considerations are going to have any effect on voters.  

I’m hardly naive enough to think that these or other economic facts will be enough to determine November’s outcome. And I have no idea how voters will factor in the deep CCP Virus-induced recession into their thinking. But the facts aren’t a throwaway, either, and although the Obama record didn’t exactly thump Mr. Trump’s, it’ll certainly provide Biden with considerable ammunition.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full Government Report on Manufacturing?

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China, manufacturing, manufacturing trade deficit, tariffs, Trade, trade war, value added, {What's Left of) Our Economy

A total stunner – that’s the best way to describe the manufacturing and trade results of this morning’s Commerce Department report on economic growth during the first quarter broken down by industry. Unfortunately, they provide causes for both optimism and pessimism about whether President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies will strengthen or weaken U.S. domestic industry over any analytically respectable period of time. And one big reason may be that manufacturers are still in the process of adjusting their business models to cope with the new policy environment.

The case for optimism rests on the quarterly growth (albeit a measly 0.03 percent) registered by American-located manufacturing despite a steep (20.25 percent) plunge in the sector’s huge and longstanding trade deficit. That kind of nosedive in the shortfall hasn’t been seen since the depths of the Great Recession – when manufacturing production was plummeting, too. (In this case, growth is measured by current-dollar “value-added,” which eliminates much of the double-counting that can result when economists calculate the production increases of final products without stripping out the previous output of the parts, components, and materials comprising them.)

The new data also contrasts with the last time of comparably meager quarterly manufacturing growth – 2016. During that final year of the Obama administration, industry grew sequentially by 0.63 percent in the second quarter, flat-lined in the third quarter, and 0.02 percent in the fourth quarter. The manufacturing trade deficit changes back then? In the second quarter, it grew by 8.96 percent, in the third quarter it increased by 7.52 percent, and in the fourth quarter is shrank – but by a bare 0.52 percent.

In fact, the last time a double-digit sequential decline in the manufacturing trade deficit took place (during the first quarter of 2016, when it sank by 10.17 percent), manufacturing production actually dropped – by 1.42 percent.

Manufacturing’s performance looks better when examined on an annual basis. Between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, manufacturing value-added grew by 4.99 percent, while the manufacturing trade gap widened by only 1.55 percent. That’s greatly improved over last year’s yearly statistics by quarter.

Between the second quarter of 2017 (the first full data quarter under President Trump), and the second quarter of 2018, manufacturing production rose by 8.08 percent, while the trade deficit widened by 7.83 percent. The third quarter numbers: 7.23 percent and 12.45 percent. The fourth quarter numbers: 6.21 percent and 17.80 percent.

The second and third quarter results were clearly distorted by “tariff front-running” – businesses’ decisions to procure as much in the way of imports from China before major duties were imposed. That’s evident from the dramatic slowdown in the manufacturing trade gap’s first quarter annualized increase.

But for both sets of data, there’s a rub that should be obvious: Both between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, and over the past year, the drop-off in the manufacturing trade deficit was accompanied by a drop-off in manufacturing’s growth rate itself. And that first quarter sequential 0.03 percent production increase was the worst such result since the fourth quarter, 2016’s 0.02 percent.

Optimists can take heart from industry’s ability to eak out growth despite continuing and even greater supply chain disruptions, and despite unusual inventory buildups triggered by tariffs and especially by their anticipation.  Also arguably encouraging manufacturing growth that’s ever less reliant on foreign inputs. Pessimists can observe out that the minimal growth indicates that adequate rates of manufacturing expansion still depend on robust net imports.

Both vantage points should recognize that domestic manufacturing remains in a state of uncertainty (as the current narrative holds) and sometimes outright confusion and turmoil – and that the threat of much more widespread China tariffs and increases on current China tariffs will greatly limit clarity going forward. Which means that both should agree that a valid verdict on the President’s trade policies won’t be possible for many months into the future.

(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: Early Signs of Manufacturing Trade Progress Under Trump

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manufacturing, manufacturing production, manufacturing trade deficit, Trade, Trade Deficits, Trump, value added, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since President Trump has focused so much of his trade policy on reducing America’s enormous and chronic deficits, it’s not surprising that the press has noted that, under his presidency so far, the trade gap has widened.

And oddly, in one respect, they just got some data showing that in the one area where the President had been able to claim progress (but hasn’t to my knowledge) – slowing growth in the deficit despite accelerating growth in the economy as a whole. As of the last monthly U.S. trade figures, the trend has once again gone south, though the economy’s still strong growth plus a stronger dollar – which makes American-origin goods and services more expensive than their foreign counterparts – are no doubt overwhelmingly responsible.

But a closer examination of the statistics reveals an important new front on which Mr. Trump’s efforts appear to be succeeding – manufacturing trade, which still dominates overall U.S. trade flows. Specifically, signs have emerged that, under his administration, domestic manufacturing is regaining the ability to boost output without relying more and more on inputs from foreign factories (which of course boost the trade shortfall) In fact, during the Trump administration’s first full data year, American manufacturing’s production has grown faster than its trade deficit – indicating that domestic goods have been replacing imports. And this progress has been made despite a speed-up in manufacturing production growth, and that stronger dollar.

Continuation of this trend would be great news for the nation’s economy. Further, it would represent a major departure from the record of the previous administration, during which the growth of the manufacturing trade deficit vastly exceeded industry’s own growth.

Actually, manufacturing trade deficit has been greatly outgrowing the sector’s output for nearly twenty years. In 2000, the trade gap represented 25.54 percent of total domestic manufacturing production (according to an output measure called value added). As of the second quarter of this year (the latest available data), that figure stood at 42.02 percent. In absolute terms, the trade gap increased by a factor of 2 and a half, while manufacturing production grew by a little over 50 percent. (All figures are stated in pre-inflation dollars.)

But this manufacturing trade deficit’s “out-performance” really took off during the Obama years. Let’s give the former President’s trade record a break by throwing out the data for the first year of the economic recovery (and his first year in office). After all, the global trade contraction during the last recession was so dramatic that the trade “snapback” effect once the recovery began was unusually strong, and couldn’t last.

From 2010 through 2016, however, while American manufacturing output advanced by 16.04 percent, the manufacturing trade deficit jumped by 52.47 percent. That’s more than three times faster. In fact, between 2015 and 2016, the manufacturing trade deficit increased by 3.23 percent even though manufacturing output actually fell by 1.78 percent.

Between 2016 and 2017 (the Trump administration’s first year), the manufacturing trade deficit rose less than twice as fast (7.31 percent) as industry’s output (4.53 percent). And I don’t think it’s coincidence that this manufacturing growth rate represented the best annual performance since that first recovery year of 2009-2010 (5.58 percent), which was surely strengthened by the aforementioned snapback effect.

We only have partial 2018 figures, of course, but they show even more improvement along these lines. Between the second quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, manufacturing output was up a sizzling 8.08 percent. But the manufacturing trade deficit grew more slowly – by 7.83 percent. That combination hasn’t been seen since 2012-2013, when industry’s output improved by 3.36 percent while the trade gap widened by only 0.77 percent.

The following year, though, manufacturing’s trade shortfall soared more than four times faster than its production. For all I know, this coming year could be a repeat of that depressing precedent. For now, however, it’s definitely evidence that the Trump trade and manufacturing policies are winning.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: America’s Third World Trade Pattern with China

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China, raw materials, third world, Trade, Trump, value added, {What's Left of) Our Economy

On Tuesday, I presented the latest data showing that its trade performance makes the United States look like a third world country, with raw materials sectors representing most of its biggest trade winners – and increasingly so.

Today, let’s look at America’s trade with China, which is a country with major first and third world characteristics, and see if U.S. producers perform any better. The answer? Only a little.

Here’s the list of the nation’s top ten export winners in China trade last year – the sectors of the economy that racked up the biggest trade surpluses with China:

1. Soybeans: $12.35 billion

2. Autos & light trucks: $8.24 billion

3. Waste and scrap: $5.49 billion

4. Crude oil & natural gas: $4.43 billion

5. Plastics materials & resins: $2.42 billion

6. Liquid natural gas: $2.42 billion

7. Pulp mill products: $1.69 billion

8. Sawmill products: $1.62 billion

9. Non-poultry meat products: $1.41 billion

10. Timber & logs: $0.97 billion

Four of these are considered commodities in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), the U.S. government’s main scheme for slicing and dicing the economy. Waste and scrap might as well be, and (processed) non-poultry meats seem pretty close. Further, the NAICS definition of sawmill products makes clear they add little value to the wood they work with.

As with the global list, the China list excludes aerospace products, since Washington has acceded to Boeing’s insistence that it not release information that distinguishes between final products on the one hand,, and their parts and components on the other.

Still, arguably, this China list is even less impressive than the list for the world at large in terms of containing items that have historically led to big productivity gains, rapid technological progress, and lofty living standards.

Now here’s the China list for 2007 (which can include disaggregated aerospace numbers):

1. Aircraft: $6.35 billion

2. Waste and scrap: $7.26 billion

3. Semiconductors: $4.37 billion

4. Soybeans: $4.10 billion

5. Plastics materials & resins: $2.28 billion

6. Cotton: $1.46 billion

7. Non-poultry meat products: $0.88 billion

8. Autos & light trucks: $0.63 billion

9. Pulp mill products: $0.59 billion

10. Prepared or preserved poultry: $0.57 billion

The NAICS system considers two of these export categories as raw materials. In terms of value creation, I’d add the separate meat and poultry sectors, along with waste and scrap. That actually produces fewer low-value sectors (six) than the 2017 list (seven).

It’s also compelling evidence that as the Trump administration continues its efforts to try to fix America’s trade problems with China, it should focus at least as much on the composition of this trade as well as the size of the bilateral deficits.