With slowing growth in China and the implosion of stock prices there, the dramatic fall in the price of oil, and recent volatility in U.S. equity markets, January is coming in like a lion. Repeating the pattern observed in recent years, the first quarter will be challenging for U.S.

Manufactured goods are ubiquitous at home, in transit, and at work, but the narrow definition of manufacturing industries in national statistics implies that the sector is of only minor importance to economic activity. The traditional finding is that manufacturers’ proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) is only about 11% and manufacturing’s share of economy-wide full-time equivalent employment is just 9%. Since this excludes manufacturing activities such as research and development, corporate management, logistics operations, and advertising and branding, those figures are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Productivity growth in the computer and electronic products subsector, once the principal driver of productivity performance in the manufacturing sector, has experienced significant waning in recent years. Consequently, the U.S. manufacturing productivity outlook has become murky. This is a challenging trend for our society, because increased productivity growth helps lift living standards. The good news is that empirical evidence put forth in this paper shows that innovation and capital investment play a key role in accelerating multifactor productivity growth (i.e., output per unit of a combined set of inputs including labor, materials, and capital) in a wide range of manufacturing industries.

We lower the forecast for this year and next because of the persistent shocks to manufacturing demand and we now see more downside than upside risks. Manufacturing production will decelerate rather than accelerate this year. Production increased 2% last year and we forecast growth of only 1.1% in 2016, 2.4% in 2017, and 2.5% in 2018.

Productivity Dynamics in U.S.

Amid all of the recent public dialogue about new manufacturing technologies and manufacturing automation investment in particular, there are little or no data offering a coherent picture of the automation investment dynamic. In this second of three MAPI Foundation papers on manufacturing productivity performance, Cliff Waldman seeks to remedy the data deficit by presenting the results of a national survey of U.S. manufacturers on their automation activity. He offers revealing stratifications of the results by company size and industry.

In the case of new technology investment, the cost side of the return-on-investment equation contains a larger and broader set of factors than is the case with a fixed technology frontier, under which all technologies are known as previously employed capital. But the benefits of a new technology investment are potentially as broad as the costs. In essence, the diffusion implications of the cost–benefit balance for new technology investment depend on corporate decision-maker flexibility regarding the payback period of the investment and an adjustment to the propensity to take a wait-and-see posture toward purchase and implementation.

This is my final MAPI Foundation report, on U.S. and Chinese trade in manufactures during the first half of 2016, as I am retiring from MAPI at the end of August. The report also provides a breakout of U.S. bilateral trade with China and Mexico, which has become a contentious electoral issue.

The EPA's Clean Power Plan creates winners and losers, with anticipated advantages for the environment but higher electricity costs and lower GDP relative to baseline forecasts. Two dozen states have already filed lawsuits over the plan and the House passed two joint resolutions to kill it.

Following is an analysis from Daniel J. Meckstroth, Ph.D., vice president and chief economist at the MAPI Foundation, the research affiliate of the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, regarding the December 2015 Institute for Supply Management report.