The depression continues. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
The “strong dollar” has been blamed for the manufacturing doldrums in the US that started over a year ago. But then manufacturing in other countries should boom, or at least not decline, but that’s not the case. Manufacturing is sick and weakening in just about every major economy!
References to 2009 and the Global Financial Crisis keep popping up in the latest spate of reports because that’s how bad it has gotten.
US manufacturing gets ugly.
On Monday, Markit reported that its US Manufacturing PMI, which tracks the overall health of the manufacturing sector via surveys sent to purchasing managers, dropped to 50.5 (below 50 = contraction) in May, the weakest reading since October 2009.
Production actually declined for the first time since September 2009, “the height of the Global Financial Crisis.” Companies blamed “reduced foreign demand” as new export orders fell for the second month in a row. And they blamed the “uncertainty around the general economic outlook” which had caused their customers “to delay spending decisions,” which then triggered production cuts.
Backlog of work fell for the fourth month in a row, at the same rate as in April, which had been a “post-recession record,” which means that companies “will be poised to cut capacity unless inflows of new work start to pick up again.”
The report summarized it this way: “The weak manufacturing PMI data cast doubt on the ability of the US economy to rebound from its disappointing start to the year in the second quarter.”
Then Japan hit the world with its collapsing trade figures.
Exports plunged 10.1% in April from a year ago, on weakness in China and other emerging markets, as Japan’s Ministry of Finance reported on Monday. Imports plummeted 23% on lower commodity prices and weak demand at home, despite (or because of) the Bank of Japan’s reckless scorched-earth monetary double whammy of QQE and negative interest rates.
So it fits in nicely that the Nikkei Japan Manufacturing PMI, also released on Monday, dropped to 47.6 (below 50 = contraction), with the output index plunging to 46.9, the sharpest decline in 25 months.
The new orders index, a harbinger for future business, dropped to 44.1, the sharpest decline in 41 months. Turns out, one of the primary reasons for the drop wasn’t the April earthquake, but “a marked contraction in foreign demand, which saw the sharpest fall in over three years.”
Overall, Japanese companies experienced the “sharpest decline in operating conditions since December 2012,” which was when Abenomics became the new economic religion of the land.
To continue reading: Manufacturing Recession Goes Global as Demand Withers
