MAPI — Manufacturers Alliance News and Reports — Quarterly Forecast and More

Issues in the Brief

Changing Priorities Could Make U.S. Best Investment by 2020
A joint study by MAPI and Deloitte, based on a survey of global manufacturers, identifies new markets companies plan to enter in the next five years. In addition, there will be two changes to the top six location drivers.

Death of the Safe Harbor Leaves Companies Scrambling
A framework commonly used by companies to transfer employee and customer data from the EU to the US is now illegal — and companies with European operations must find alternatives before the grace period ends in January. This creates significant problems for businesses investigating bribery and corruption, since even work emails are considered private in the EU.

What’s Behind Europe’s Brighter Economic Prospects?
Europe’s economic growth is rebounding. From the depths of the industrial recession in late 2012, Eurozone manufacturing output has turned around. It shot up by more than 0.5 percentage points in about a year, to stabilize at about 1.0%-1.5% average annual growth over the past four quarters.

ISM Analysis: Manufacturing Activity ‘Almost at a Standstill’
“The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reports that the October 2015 index was 50.1%, down slightly from 50.2% in September,” noted Meckstroth. “With the dividing line between growth and decline at 50%, the reports indicate that manufacturing activity is almost at a standstill, neither rising nor falling.

Economic Update

Quarterly Economic Forecast: Modest to Moderate Growth But No ‘Breakout’ Boom
A number of factors have challenged economic growth in 2015, among them a second straight severe winter, the West Coast port strike, a strong dollar, and collapse of oil prices, but assuming the first two were anomalies, there should be marginal improvement for 2016, according to a new forecast.

European Economic Outlook: Manufacturing Recovery Stalls but Consumers Earn More, Spend More
Europe’s recovery may be slow, but production of consumer goods is accelerating. Within manufacturing, employment, hours worked and gross wages are all increasing. Meanwhile, consumer confidence is showing weakness and capital formation has stalled amid fears of instability.

Manufacturing Activity: October 2015
Manufacturing production has been very uneven this year, in part, from swings in the automobile industry, and this trend is indicative of sluggish growth. In September, output declined 0.1%, the strong dollar continued to take a toll on manufacturers and sector employment dropped for the second month in a row.