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Trade Wars
Inside the USMCA Review: Timeline, Tensions and What Comes Next
A key date is looming for United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trilateral trade agreement among the U.S., Canada and Mexico that took effect July 1, 2020. Among its provisions, USMCA included a six-year review process aimed to give parties to the treaty an opportunity to weigh in on what is working and what could be improved. That looming date is July 1, 2026, the six-year anniversary of the treaty. Holland & Knight international trade and disputes attorney Patrick Childress provides an update on where negotiations stand, proposed changes to the treaty, and what the outcome of the negotiations could mean for automotive manufacturers. Observations from Childress include:
- “… the overall dynamic in the negotiations is one where the U.S. government is the one making demands and seeking big changes in the treaty, and the Canadian and Mexican governments are pushing back.”
- “It's become pretty clear at this point that the parties are going to blow right past that July 1 deadline and continue these negotiations after July 1 …”
- “… the U.S. government has proposed to increase the requirement for regional value content in automobiles.” Moreover, “the U.S. government has proposed, in addition to this regional value content requirement, a U.S. content requirement—so there would need to be a certain percentage of the value in every traded automobile, a certain percentage of that value would have to come from the United States, specifically, not just the region.”
Read more at Industry Week
Planned Industrial Construction Projects Remain Steady in May 2026 with 400 New Projects
Industrial SalesLeads announced today the May 2026 results for its planned industrial capital project spending report, tracking North American facility expansions, new plant construction, and significant equipment modernization projects across all major industrial sectors. The firm's industrial market research team confirmed 400 new planned industrial projects during the month of May, representing a 2% decrease from the 408 projects reported in April 2026. Planned Industrial Construction - By Project Type:
- Manufacturing Facilities - 150 New Projects
- Processing Facilities - 76 New Projects
- Distribution and Industrial Warehouse - 187 New Projects
- Power/Energy/Oil and Gas - 13 New Projects
- Laboratory Facilities - 66 New Projects
- Mine - 0 New Projects
- Terminal - 0 New Projects
- Pipeline - 0 New Projects
Read more at Industry.Net
Corning Is Riding High on the AI Boom—and Planning Ahead in Case It Goes Bust
Corning, the 175-year-old American company that made the glass screen on your phone as well as the fiber optics delivering the internet to it, is on a tear. Its stock has roughly doubled since Jan. 1. It’s on pace to deliver on its plan to increase sales 50% by 2028. It recently signed multibillion-dollar deals with Nvidia and Meta to provide fiber for data centers and has just announced yet another, this time with Amazon. So why is the company’s chief executive, Wendell Weeks, insisting on provisions in those deals to protect Corning in the event the world’s most valuable tech companies don’t actually need all the fiber they think they will? And how can he demand such terms?
The answers to these questions can be found in Corning’s long history of research and development and talent retention, not to mention the fact that Weeks, CEO since 2005, headed the fiber-optics division during the dot-com boom and bust. Corning’s deal terms—which sometimes include upfront money from customers to build out manufacturing capacity required to deliver their orders—are all about apportioning risk to its rightful owner, Weeks told me in a wide-ranging interview conducted the day after the Amazon deal was announced.
Read more at The WSJ
US Defense Spending Underscores Industrial Capacity
America's strategic edge has never been just the aircraft—it’s been the industrial capacity to outbuild and out-innovate anyone on the planet. That means the machinists, welders and assemblers, sheet metal and composite fabricators, toolmakers and other manufacturing folk, not to mention the engineering muscle and supply base behind them. The Aerospace Industries Association reports that the U.S. aerospace and defense industry generated nearly $1 trillion in economic activity in 2024. More importantly, it employs 2.2 million workers with an average income of $115,000 per job, 56% above the national average.
Companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and other primes are responsible for much of this. Still, they couldn’t do it without these industrious workers, nor without the countless small and midsized suppliers and contract manufacturers that feed them parts and materials without fail.
Read more at Advanced Manufacturing
Siemens Debuts Its Own AI Co-Worker
Siemens has followed the trend perpetuated by IFS and others to introduce software that employs agentic AI virtual workers alongside human employees to redefine industrial workflows and help perform high-volume or repetitive tasks on the factory floor. The Siemens product is called Intelligence Center X, it’s part of the company’s Xcelerator software portfolio and, like IFS before it, Siemens rolled out this signature product in front of hundreds of attendees, this presentation last week in Detroit at its Realize LIVE. Intelligence Center X was the company's lead product announcement at the show.
Siemens said Intelligence Center X is designed to connect data across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and service into shared lifecycle intelligence that AI can act on. The IFS “workers” are aimed at specific departments and functions such as supply chain management (ranking alternate suppliers, automatically releasing purchase orders, tracking confirmations, and flagging excess costs), procurement (reconciling supplier orders across dozens of vendors, automatically extract vital info from supplier emails and portals, verify against purchase orders), and inventory control (monitoring inventory positions demands and executing routine replenishments.
Read more at Smart Industry
Novelis Restarts Oswego Hot Mill Months After Fires
Novelis’ largest aluminum plant will resume hot mill operations sooner than expected following two fires last fall, CEO Steven Fisher said on an earnings call Tuesday. The company has already started commissioning the Oswego, New York, location, and will have coils coming off the mill in the next few weeks to support “pent-up” demand in the automotive and beverage packing industries, Fisher said. Novelis expects a “total negative cash flow impact” of $1.7 billion from the fires, including repair, clean-up and idle worker costs, according to an investor filing. The September and November fires primarily affected Oswego’s hot mill, finishing and motor room areas. No injuries were reported from the incidents.
While Oswego’s hot mill operations have been idle over the past several months, Fisher said Novelis has focused on recovery and mitigation efforts by rerouting shipments globally and leveraging alternative sourcing to meet customer demand. During the quarter that ended March 31, Novelis saw higher automotive and beverage packaging shipments across its Europe, Asia and South America segments over last year, according to an earnings presentation. This was partially driven by increased demand from North American customers.
Read more at Manufacturing Dive
Pentagon To Use $13.7 Additional Billion To Boost F-35 Readiness, GAO Reports
The Pentagon plans to spend an additional $13.7 billion through 2031 to boost declining readiness rates of the F-35 jet, but issues such as constrained industry capacity to meet increasing demand for parts could “threaten its success,” according to a government watchdog report. Since 2021, the F-35 fighter jet sustainment costs have continued to increase, but the aircraft has not met performance goals, and performance has continued to trend down.
The mission capable rate (percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions) declined from 67% to 44%. And the full mission capable rate (percentage of time the aircraft can perform all of its missions) declined from 38% to 25%. In a new report published Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that the Joint Program Office will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other materials to increase the rates at which the aircraft are deemed capable of completing missions.
Read more at Stars & Stripes
DOE Unveils Road Map To Develop Fusion For Electricity
The Department of Energy has released a blueprint outlining a path forward DOE’s final fusion strategy, which involved the input of more than 800 scientists and engineers, outlines proposals to secure the infrastructure needed to commercialize the technology within the next decade and sets detailed timelines for the department to reach milestones. Nuclear fusion, which generates electricity by emulating the process powering the sun, has yet to be “demonstrated at scale to produce electricity.” The plan—which was announced Tuesday and calls for industry, academia and the DOE’s national laboratories to collaborate to fill “technology gaps”—will be implemented by the new Office of Fusion.
The roadmap recommends fusion energy be developed by building critical infrastructure, innovating through research, computing and artificial intelligence and expanding the “fusion ecosystem.” The agency said it would aim to build small-to-medium-scale facilities in the next three to five years to help companies better harness fusion reactions. The blueprint, however, doesn’t commit the agency to specific funding amounts, and President Trump’s FY2027 budget includes about $50 million in fusion-related spending cuts. In 2025, however, Energy Secretary Chris Wright established a new fusion office and in April said on a podcast that “fusion on the grid could arrive within 10 years ‘if everything goes awesomely well.’”
Read more at E&E News from Politico
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