The Outlook for American Manufacturing in 2020: Three Scenarios

AUSTIN, Texas - Dec. 11, 2019 - PRLog -- President Trump's recent visit to the Apple computer factory in Austin, Texas, highlights the resurgence of manufacturing in this region. However, manufacturing growth across the country has been uneven in 2019, and the outlook for 2020 is still uncertain. We consider three possible scenarios for US manufacturing in the coming year.

As we approach the 2020 presidential election year, the White House is stepping up its efforts to showcase a resurgence in American manufacturing.

This past July, American manufacturers were invited to the White House to showcase their 'made-in-American' products at the third annual 2019 Made in America Product Showcase.

And President Trump has been traveling on the road across the US, touting the administration's progress in attracting new American manufacturing jobs.

In November, Trump met up with Apple CEO Tim Cook in North Austin (not far from Formaspace's own factory headquarters) to tour the Flextronics International manufacturing facility, which manufactures the new line of Apple Mac Pro computers.

The White House has reasons to celebrate, but also has reasons for concern.

After years of US manufacturing growth, some warning signs have appeared on the horizon. A strike against GM in October helped push down manufacturing indexes to levels not seen since the Great Recession.

But it's been an uneven slowdown: manufacturing growth in central Texas remains steady but the upper Midwest is showing greater signs of manufacturing industry weakness.

Unfortunately, one of the key future economic indicators, the PMI (Purchasing Managers Index), has been drifting downward below 50% over the last two quarters, which means we may be skirting with a mild regional recession in manufacturing going into 2020. Manufacturing PMI fell to 47.8% and remained below fifty percent again in November (48.1%).

Manufacturing Outlook For The Year 2020: Three Possible Scenarios

As we enter the highly charged politics of a presidential election year, what can the manufacturing industry expect?

We look at three possible scenarios.

Read more ... https://formaspace.com/articles/manufacturing/american-ma...