The recovery in global industrial production, which has been a key driver of the metals price recovery in 2016, slowed sharply in August, according to the latest round of manufacturing PMI data. The culprit was the US, which returned to contraction, easily offsetting a small acceleration in China. Some of the data was contradictory, however, raising hopes this was only a blip.
Our estimate of the global manufacturing PMI, which includes 16 manufacturing powers’ PMIs1 weighted by industrial output, fell by 0.4 points to 50.3 in August, its lowest in three months (Fig 1). It is also only slightly above the 50 line that in PMI surveys denotes the difference between an expanding and contracting sector.
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific's leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
