US manufacturing is not a recession red flag
美国制造业并非经济衰退的危险信号

Good morning. The Nvidia correction continues. Shares in the chipmaker were down 9.5 per cent at closing yesterday. Should CEO Jensen Huang trade his signature leather jacket for a cheap, all-weather denim? Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and aiden.reiter@ft.com.
早上好。Nvidia 修正仍在继续。这家芯片制造商的股价在昨天收盘时下跌了 9.5%。首席执行官 Jensen Huang 是否应该用他的标志性皮夹克换取廉价的全天候牛仔裤？给我们发电子邮件：robert.armstrong@ft.com 和 aiden.reiter@ft.com。

Stop worrying so much about manufacturing surveys
不用太担心制造业调查

The S&P 500 fell by more than 2 per cent yesterday. The Financial Times story (and indeed every story) on the sell-off linked the decline to weak survey data from the manufacturing sector, which “added to investor concerns about an economic slowdown”. 
标准普尔 500 指数昨天下跌超过 2%。《金融时报》关于抛售的报道（实际上是每篇报道）都将下跌与制造业疲软的调查数据联系起来，这“加剧了投资者对经济放缓的担忧”。

The survey-based ISM Manufacturing index for August, at 47.2, was barely improved from its dreary July level. The index’s new orders component, thought to be a leading indicator, fell almost three points, to 44.6. Remember (who would blame you for blocking it out?) that the poor July reading was the initial tremor that, when combined with a bad jobs report, became the market mini-quake of a month ago. 
8 月份基于调查的 ISM 制造业指数为 47.2，与 7 月份的沉闷水平相比几乎没有改善。该指数的新订单成分股被认为是一个领先指标，下跌近 3 个点，至 44.6。请记住（谁会怪你把它屏蔽掉呢？）糟糕的 7 月数据是最初的震动，再加上糟糕的就业报告，它成为一个月前的市场小地震。

So this seems like a good moment to ask how much we should worry about weak manufacturing ISM readings. And the answer is: not much. 
因此，现在似乎是询问我们应该对疲软的制造业 ISM 数据有多担心的好时机。答案是：不多。

A few obvious points to start. First, the August number is not really news. The July and August ISM readings are not that much worse than the numbers from the past couple of years. Yes, the new orders number is a multiyear low, but it’s just one month:
几个明显的要点要开始。首先，8 月份的数据并不是真正的新闻。7 月和 8 月 ISM 读数并不比过去几年的数字差多少。是的，新订单数量是多年来的最低点，但只有一个月：

Next, it is not obvious that the market sell-off had all that much to do with the manufacturing report. The most notable decliner yesterday was Nvidia, off almost 10 per cent. Nvidia is not a manufacturer, and is not particularly sensitive to the cyclical trends that affect manufacturers. Broadening the point, the persistently soft signal from the ISM survey has not been picked up by the stock market: industrial stocks have done just fine in the past couple of years. 
接下来，市场抛售与制造业报告有太大关系并不明显。昨天跌幅最明显的是英伟达（Nvidia），下跌了近10%。Nvidia 不是制造商，对影响制造商的周期性趋势不是特别敏感。更广泛地说，ISM 调查中持续疲软的信号并未被股市捕捉到：工业股在过去几年中表现良好。

In theory, we should care about a manufacturing survey — despite manufacturing being a bit more than a tenth of US GDP, and an even smaller share of employment — because manufacturing can be a leading indicator of demand in other sectors. “If there is no appetite for manufactured goods from services, retail, mining or construction, that tells you something,” says Skanda Amarnath of Employ America. That said, Amarnath also points out that US manufacturers serve global customers, so the ISMs may reflect weak global, rather than US demand. And uncertainty about the rate cycle and the presidential election may be shifting demand to the future, rather than destroying it. 
从理论上讲，我们应该关心制造业调查——尽管制造业占美国 GDP 的十分之一多一点，在就业中的份额甚至更小——因为制造业可以成为其他行业需求的领先指标。“如果对来自服务、零售、采矿或建筑的制成品没有兴趣，那就说明了一些事情，”Employ America 的 Skanda Amarnath 说。也就是说，Amarnath 还指出，美国制造商为全球客户提供服务，因此 ISM 可能反映了全球需求疲软，而不是美国需求。利率周期和总统选举的不确定性可能会将需求转向未来，而不是摧毁未来。

If the weak manufacturing ISM reading reflected low investment level by domestic customers, we would expect to see that in the GDP data on investment. But real investment growth has only fallen a bit (and investment in equipment is rising): 
如果疲软的制造业 ISM 数据反映了国内客户的低投资水平，那么我们预计会在 GDP 投资数据中看到这一点。但实际投资增长仅略有下降（设备投资正在上升）：

Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics generalises the point: “soft” indicators of sentiment such as surveys and “hard” indicators of production have come apart in manufacturing. This should not come as a surprise to us at a moment when consumer sentiment (lousy) and consumption (just fine, thanks) are not tracking each other either. He thinks manufacturing is set to recover. Inventory levels are low and will have to rise at some point; lower interest rates should support investment; getting the election over with one way or the other will help confidence; and subsidies and other Biden administration supports for domestic manufacturing continue. 
牛津经济研究院（Oxford Economics）的马修·马丁（Matthew Martin）概括了这一点：“软”情绪指标（如调查）和“硬”生产指标在制造业中已经分崩离析。在消费者情绪（糟糕）和消费（很好，谢谢）也没有相互跟踪的时刻，这对我们来说应该不足为奇。他认为制造业将复苏。库存水平很低，在某个时候必须上升;较低的利率应该会支持投资;以某种方式结束选举将有助于信心;以及拜登政府对国内制造业的补贴和其他支持仍在继续。

Housing supply 住房供应

Housing in America is punishingly expensive, and the presidential candidates have noticed. Kamala Harris has promised to increase housing supply by 3mn units. Donald Trump has pledged to bring down prices and to “protect America’s suburbs”. 
美国的住房非常昂贵，总统候选人已经注意到了这一点。卡玛拉·哈里斯 （Kamala Harris） 承诺将住房供应增加 3 百万个单位。唐纳德·特朗普承诺降低价格并“保护美国的郊区”。

If the next president is lucky, falling interest rates will loosen the market. But a real fix requires new supply — and the supply side of the US housing market is mostly governed locally, not federally. Local zoning laws tend to focus on maintaining property values and a neighbourhood’s “feeling”, and thus often limit new buildings through lengthy approval processes or restrictive policies.
如果下一任总统幸运的话，利率下降将使市场松动。但真正的解决方案需要新的供应——而美国住房市场的供应侧主要由地方管理，而不是联邦管理。当地的分区法往往侧重于维护房产价值和社区的“感觉”，因此经常通过冗长的审批程序或限制性政策来限制新建筑。

So how can the federal government increase supply? Experts identify four policy routes:
那么，联邦政府如何增加供应呢？专家确定了四条政策路线：

• Financial incentives to build new units. This has been done through block grants that help states to construct new public housing units, and through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), which rewards builders of affordable homes. The Harris campaign has proposed a tax incentive for developers that make affordable starter homes. The Trump campaign has made no such promises. But, again, developers receiving stimulus are governed by local law.
  建造新单位的财政激励措施。 这是通过帮助各州建造新的公共住房单元的整笔拨款，以及通过奖励经济适用房建筑商的低收入住房税收抵免 （LIHTC） 来实现的。哈里斯竞选团队提议为建造负担得起的首套住房的开发商提供税收激励措施。特朗普竞选团队没有做出这样的承诺。但是，同样，接受刺激计划的开发人员受当地法律管辖。
  

• Influence local zoning. The federal government can incentivise local governments to change their zoning laws. Just last year, the Biden administration launched the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing programme, which rewards jurisdictions up to $10mn for removing laws that limit new building. The Biden administration and several bills in Congress have also tried to encourage the legalisation of new, cheaper types of housing. This is mostly uncharted territory, though. From Sara Bronin at Cornell University, who runs the National Zoning Atlas:

I would argue that we don’t know enough about zoning to be precise about those incentives . . . The current federal programmes tend to have very general outcomes; they don’t prescribe many specific actions that local governments must make.

And reforming zoning laws is hard even when change is initiated locally. From Kate Nelischer at the University of Southern California: 

Changing local zoning laws requires a lot of professional planners, and long processes of community consultation that can be contentious . . . It is not an easy challenge to solve, and there are a lot of [additional] complexities when the federal government works with local and state authorities.

• Incentivise conversions and rehabilitations. The government could incentivise the rehabilitations of old houses not currently in use. The Harris-Walz campaign endorsed the Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, a Senate proposal to give tax credits for rehabilitations.

  The federal government could also incentivise the conversion of empty commercial buildings. The Biden administration put conversions in its action plan, but there is no federal tax incentive on the books — but passing one may be viewed as a bailout for real estate investors, and thus politically sensitive.
  

• Reward selling. Existing home sales make up the majority of the housing market, and those sales have been frozen by the current fiscal situation. Twenty per cent of sold homes are actually net additive to the market, meaning that the owner did not buy or rent a new home after selling, according to Rick Palacios at John Burns Consulting — either because it was a vacation home, an investment or they moved in with family afterwards. Revising current capital gains tax laws could incentivise owners of multiple properties to relinquish the excess supply to the market. Giving a tax break to families that own multiple homes could be politically tricky, though. 

In short: there are things the federal government can do, but local zoning remains the key determinant, and the politics are tricky. Any change emanating from Washington will be painfully slow. 

(Reiter)

One good read

Beijing in Albany.

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