China steel PMI remains weak

Here are the latest China steel PMI numbers:

March	Feb.	Jan.	Dec.	Nov.	Oct.	Sept.
	2019	2019	2019	2018	2018	2018	2018
	Index
Steel Industry PMI	46.8	50.6	51.5	45.6	45.2	52.1	52.0
Output	44.7	52.2	46.8	44.6	47.6	55.7	53.6
New Orders	46.3	47.8	53.4	39.5	35.4	52.3	48.9
New Export Orders	46.2	48.7	44.1	35.8	43.2	47.3	46.5
Inventories of Finished Goods	31.2	60.5	42.4	48.8	58.8	42.3	53.7
Inventories of Raw Materials	42.1	55.2	55.7	47.7	54.8	54.2	58.0
	Month-on-month level change
Steel Industry PMI	-3.8	-0.9	5.9	0.4	-6.9	0.1	-1.4
Output	-7.5	5.4	2.2	-3.0	-8.1	2.1	3.6
New Orders	-1.5	-5.6	13.9	4.1	-16.9	3.4	-9.2
New Export Orders	-2.5	4.6	8.3	-7.4	-4.1	0.8	-6.7
Inventories of Finished Goods	-29.3	18.1	-6.4	-10.0	16.5	-11.4	13.5
Inventories of Raw Materials	-13.1	-0.5	8.0	-7.1	0.6	-3.8	5.9

And the headline chart:

Obviously this is nothing like the 2016 bounce. I remains skeptical that China has done anything more effective than stabilise falling growth.

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

About the author

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.