#654 – MAPI’s Industrial Outlook

MAPI’s Industrial Outlook

MAPI (Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation) posts a variety of research, forecasts, and analyses to provide unique insight on how the economy and governmental policies impact the manufacturing sector. We at Agracel look forward to their quarterly forecast on annual U.S. GDP change, as it generally includes a breakdown by specific manufacturing industry, such as automotive, metal fabricating, plastics, etc. This information plays a role in the balance of our lease portfolio.

The recent economic forecast included the following key points:

• The MAPI Foundation’s forecast remains almost completely unchanged from our June or February 2017 reports. Between 2017 and 2020, we expect annual U.S. GDP growth to be an average 2.2% across the four-year period.
• While growth in the U.S. remains moderate and constrained by domestic political and policy challenges, there is no sign that the lengthy U.S. economic expansion, which began in June 2009, is about to end.
• The impact of Hurricane Harvey that descended upon South Texas and Louisiana in late August is the most significant uncertainty for U.S. manufacturing growth for the balance of 2017 and into the early months of 2018. While the impact of Hurricane Irma, which ravaged the large state of Florida, won’t be known for some time, it seems clear that it will exacerbate the already substantial supply change interruptions that follow from Hurricane Harvey, with measurable implications for manufacturing growth performance.

We expect the next MAPI forecast will contain some changes as the economy adjusts for the hurricanes’ impact.

We utilize a number of economic indicators in our own forecasting. Hopefully, utilizing as many of these tools as possible will result in reliable forecasts.