Closing post
Time for a recap…
UK factories staged a recovery in October after the reopening of Jaguar Land Rover operations and a pick-up in consumer spending, according to a closely watched survey of the manufacturing sector.
The S&P Global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a one-year high as business optimism improved and factory output expanded.
Jaguar Land Rover, Britain’s biggest carmaker, supported the recovery after it began reopening facilities hit by a cyber-attack that some experts estimated cost the UK economy about £1.9bn.
US factories, meanwhile, reported that tariffs weighed on their exports, and also led to another steep rise in input prices. Stocks of finished goods also jumped, suggesting weakening demand.
The world’s biggest oil producers have agreed to pause their planned oil production hikes in the first months of next year to assuage fears that the global market may become oversupplied with crude.
The Opec+ group agreed yesterday to nudge the cartel’s exports up by 137,000 barrels a day in December, before halting any further rises in January, February and March.
The oil price rose in response, but has since dipped back, with Brent crude now down 0.3% at $64.59 per barrel.
In deals news….
Consumer goods maker Kimberly-Clark has agreed to buy Tylenol owner Kenvue for $48.7bn.
OpenAI has signed a seven-year, $38bn deal to buy cloud services from Amazon.com.
Updated
US manufacturing hit by tariffs and shutdown gloom
US tariffs have hit sales abroad last month, and pushed up costs, a new survey shows.
The latest poll of purchasing managers across the US manufacturing industry has found that new exports fell last month, indicating that tariffs hurt international trade.
Tariffs also continued to underpin a steep level of cost inflation in the manufacturing economy, data provider S&P Global reports.
More broadly, the report shows that output and new orders rose at a stronger rate last month, as the US manufacturing economy improved .
But, Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, warns that the underlying picture is “not so healthy”, adding:
“Most worrying is the unprecedented rise in unsold stock reported in October, widely linked to weaker than anticipated sales to customers, especially in export markets, which could trigger a downshifting of production in the coming months unless demand revives.
Companies have also become less optimistic about the year ahead, with sentiment back down close to the gloomy levels seen around the April tariff announcements. US trade policy uncertainties are again a big factor in dampening business spirits, with tariff policies being increasingly blamed both on rising export losses and import supply chain disruptions.
These export and import worries are being exacerbated by more domestically focused political concerns, including the federal shutdown, which are manifesting themselves most prominently in consumer-focused industries.
Business confidence among producers of consumer goods is now down to its lowest for two years as firms growing increasingly worried about household spending in the US and falling sales to consumers in export markets.”
Updated
