ComentáriosConstataçõesPerspectivasExplicativos
Tema
Manufacturing
10 textos
Textos
- PerspectivaIndustrial Policy
Productive capacity names a quantity that no series on this site reports
Of the fifty-eight annual series in the file behind this site, one carries the word capacity in its title, and it reports a percentage of capacity rather than an amount of it. What stands in are four measures of four different things, and they moved in different directions over the same three years.
- ComentárioIndustrial Policy
Announced investment is not a statistic and industrial policy should stop being scored on it
Construction spending on manufacturing plant rose from an annual rate of 82 billion dollars in 2021 to 215 billion in 2025, while the manufacturing output index moved from 97.6 to 97.3 on a 2017 base of 100. Lag complicates the comparison: a plant paid for in 2024 reaches an output index years later, which argues for waiting rather than scoring the policy on its announcements.
- PerspectivaIndustrial Policy
Industrial strategy is a decade-long commitment made by institutions that are not built to hold one
Spending on manufacturing plant rose from a yearly rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 in 2024, lifting the factory share of all nonresidential building from 8.8 percent to 18.8. Manufacturing employment reached its high for these six years in 2023 and is lower now, which is what it looks like when a country can order buildings faster than the institutions to run them.
- ConstataçãoIndustrial Policy
Core capital-goods orders took three years to return to their 2022 figure
The monthly average rose from 62 billion dollars in 2020 to 77 in 2022, then ran 75, 74 and back to 77. The figure counts dollars and is not adjusted for prices, so a return to the same number is not a return to the same order book.
- ConstataçãoIndustrial Policy
Manufacturing output has been below its 2017 level in every year since 2020
The manufacturing index read 93 on a 2017 base of 100 in 2020 and 97.3 in 2025, with a high of 98 in 2022. Total industrial production, on the same base and from the same board, crossed 100 in 2022 and has stayed above it, and the distance between the two lines has widened at every step since 2021.
- ComentárioTrade & Investment
A tariff is borne at home, and the published data closes two of the three answers that say otherwise
Goods imports from China fell from a monthly average of 45 billion dollars in 2022 to 26 in 2025, while imports of goods and services rose from 3.97 trillion to 4.25, so the buying moved rather than came home. No series on this site measures a duty collected or an import price, so whether the exporter cut his own price cannot be tested here at all.
- ConstataçãoInfrastructure
Nonresidential construction spending rose 14 billion in 2025 after 450 in three years
The annual rate stands at 1,309 billion dollars, the highest of six readings, and the step that brought it there is the smallest rise in the series. Spending on manufacturing plant fell 29 billion in the same year, so a total that barely moved sits on top of a 43-billion rise in everything else.
- ExplicativoIndustrial Policy
What "manufacturing as a share of GDP" actually measures
The share has fallen every year since 2022. That is not the same as making less, and the difference is where most arguments about industrial policy go wrong.
- ExplicativoIndustrial Policy
What a domestic content rule actually requires
A Buy American clause is an origin test written into a contract, not a ban on foreign goods. By the end you will know how the test is computed, who has to prove it, and what a waiver reveals.
- ConstataçãoIndustrial Policy
Factory construction spending fell in 2025 after four straight years of increase
The monthly average rose from 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024, then fell to 215 billion in 2025, the only fall in six readings. Nonresidential construction spending, from the same agency and on the same basis, rose in that same year.
