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Trade Wars
US Cutting Tool Demand Rising, but Uncertain
Consumption of cutting tools by U.S. machining operations rose 2.7% from December 2025 to January 2026, which also marked a 9.9% rise over the January 2025 result. It reconfirmed an upward trend for domestic manufacturing activity that developed during the closing months of 2024 and continued steadily through last year. Cutting tools are critical consumables for manufacturers supplying major industrial sectors, like automotive, aerospace, construction, defense, energy, and numerous others.
However, according Bret Tayne, president of cutting-tool manufacturer Everede Tool Co., noted that the January consumption data signals potential for continued volatility in cutting-tool demand. “Cutting tool shipments increased 2.7% from December 2025 to January 2026, which was the slowest growth between December and January since 2022. Recent events have raised economic uncertainty, complicating efforts to project levels of overall industrial production.”
Read more at American Machinist
The Iran Conflict May Be Overseas. The Cyber Disruption May Not Be.
Most cyber threats have a financial motive. There’s a negotiation. Life hopefully goes on. When the motive is disruption, there’s no negotiation. No path to resolution. Just the outage, the confusion and a leadership team scrambling to respond while customers are watching. Iranian-affiliated groups have run this playbook before and the current environment has elevated the risk it gets run again. This is a different kind of threat than most organizations have been planning for. Three Things That Actually Matter Right Now:
- Know what’s exposed, including what you don’t directly control. Whether you run on-premise, in the cloud or rely on SaaS platforms for core operations, your attack surface includes every vendor and third party connected to your environment.
- Know who has access to what. When access gets compromised, operations stop. Revenue stops. And the hardest part is that most leadership teams genuinely don’t know what’s out there until someone maps it.
- Know if you can actually recover. Everyone has a plan. Not everyone has tested it. And remember, recovery isn’t just about your own systems. If a critical SaaS platform or third-party application goes down, whether because they were hit or you were hit through them, can your business keep running?
Read more at PKF O’Connor Davies
US Single-Family Housing Starts Fall In January, Permits Decline
U.S. single-family homebuilding fell in January amid harsh winter weather, and a strong rebound is unlikely, with permits for future construction declining. Single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, dropped 2.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 935,000 units in January, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said on Thursday. Data for December was revised lower to show starts rebounding to a rate of 962,000 units instead of the previously estimated 981,000-unit rate. Though mortgage rates have declined this year, stimulating home purchasing, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is pushing up oil prices and boosting U.S. Treasury yields. Mortgage rates track the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield.
Groundbreaking on new single-family housing projects tumbled 33.3% in the Northeast and fell 4.6% in the densely populated South. Starts rose in the Midwest and the West regions. Heavy snow and frigid temperatures slammed large parts of the country in January. Single-family starts dropped 6.5% year-on-year in January. Homebuilding has been hampered by tariffs on imported goods, including lumber and vanity cabinets, worker shortages amid an immigration crackdown and higher mortgage rate rates.
Read more at Reuters
Standard Lithium-Equinor Joint Venture Inks Lithium Offtake Deal With Trafigura
Standard Lithium said on Monday its joint venture with Norway's Equinor (EQNR.OL), opens new tab had signed its first binding offtake agreement to supply lithium carbonate from its southwest Arkansas project to commodities trader Trafigura. The joint venture, Smackover Lithium, will supply Trafigura with 8,000 metric tons per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate over a 10-year period starting when commercial production begins.
The agreement marks a key milestone for the southwest Arkansas project as the partners seek to secure long-term customers and financing ahead of a final investment decision and construction. Smackover Lithium is targeting about 22,500 metric tons of annual lithium carbonate production capacity in the project's first phase and plans to secure offtake agreements for around 80% of that output. The Trafigura agreement covers more than 40% of that targeted volume.
Read more at Reuters
These Women Pursued A Skilled Trade — Here’s What They Told Us About Their Experience In A Male-Dominated World
Mounting evidence points to opportunities in the skilled trades. And yet, these jobs remain largely a man’s world. Despite higher salaries and increasingly valuable long-term employment prospects in the face of an artificial intelligence-driven white-collar jobs revolution, women remain significantly underrepresented in the skilled trades, research shows. They make up just a fraction of the workforce in industries such as automotive technology, diesel mechanics, plumbing and carpentry. For example, women represented 3.1% each of carpenters and plumbers and 3.5% of electricians employed in the U.S. in 2025, according to the most recent occupational data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, younger workers are increasingly pursuing careers in the skilled trades — with good reason. A shortage of skilled tradespeople has led to more job openings and higher pay among these career-driven pathways. But even as experienced workers age out of the field, young men are more likely to fill those spots. Some women have forged ahead anyway. For women, especially, the demand for skilled-trade roles creates opportunities for employment growth and rising salaries, potentially narrowing the gender wage gap and strengthening their economic security. CNBC spoke to four women in skilled trades. Here’s what they said about their experiences in the field:
Read more at Forbes
Artemis II: NASA targets early April for Moon mission
NASA says it's on track to launch its Artemis II mission in early April, which will see astronauts fly around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. The rocket had been set to blast off in March, but after a helium leak was discovered it was returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for repairs. NASA says it's confident the problem is fixed, and is planning to roll the rocket back out to the launchpad on 19 March, with the earliest possible launch date of 1 April. Speaking at a press briefing, NASA leaders also emphasised the risks involved with the mission.
"I am comfortable and the agency is comfortable with targeting April 1 as our first opportunity, just keep in mind we still have work to go," said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. "There are still things that need to be done within the Vehicle Assembly Building and out at the pad, and as always, we'll always be guided by what the hardware is telling us, and we will launch when we're ready." NASA is under pressure to launch the Artemis II mission. It has already been delayed by two years after problems were found with the heat shield on the first Artemis mission, which saw the Space Launch System and Orion capsule fly to the Moon without any people onboard. In December 2024, the space agency set a deadline to launch Artemis II before the end of April 2026.
Read more at BBC
Atlas Energy To Buy $840M In Power Assets From Caterpillar
Atlas Energy has inked a multiyear agreement to secure 1.4 gigawatts of incremental natural gas power generation assets from Caterpillar to meet surging electricity demand. Under the agreement, the Austin-based power systems and proppant supplier will invest $840 million to obtain large natural gas reciprocating generator sets, including Caterpillar’s CG260-16 and G3520 models used for behind the meter and bridge power applications. Deliveries are scheduled between 2027 and 2029. Annual price increases will be capped at 8% per year, according to the agreement. The deal is one of Caterpillar’s largest as the company continues to build out its power systems segment for data center and oil and gas customers. It also has an extension option if more orders are needed.
What used to be Caterpillar’s weakest segment has become its fastest-growing, powered by surging investments in data centers. In the fourth quarter, power system sales reached $9.4 billion, up 23% from the previous year and well above Caterpillar’s construction and mining segments. In November, company executives told investors they would rename the segment to Power & Energy to better reflect the shift in demand toward power generation and oil and gas solutions.
Read more at Manufacturing Dive
Honda Expects Up to $15.7 Billion Hit From EV Strategy Reassessment
Honda Motor expects to book up to $15.7 billion in expenses and losses related to the reassessment of its electric-vehicle strategy, and expects to swing to its first annual loss in decades as a result. Expenses and losses related to the re-evaluation could total as much as 2.500 trillion yen for the fiscal year ending March 31 and in the coming years, the Japanese automaker said last week, after its global rivals gave gloomy outlooks in recent months.
Honda said it has decided to cancel the launches and development of certain models in response to a slowdown in the North American EV market. The company also expects to record impairment losses on investments in China due to intensified competition. Honda on Thursday projected a net loss of between Y420 billion and Y690 billion for the fiscal year, down from its previous net profit forecast of Y300 billion. That would be the first annual loss since the company started reporting its consolidated results in 1977. It maintained its annual revenue forecast at Y21.100 trillion.
Read more at the WSJ
GE Vernova And Hitachi Explore Deployment Of BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor In Southeast Asia
GE Vernova and Hitachi Ltd. have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore opportunities to deploy the BWRX-300 small modular reactor in Southeast Asia. The agreement was signed in Tokyo during the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial & Business Forum in the presence of U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa. Under the agreement, the companies will collaborate through the GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Hitachi GE Vernova Nuclear Energy joint ventures to identify potential commercial opportunities for the BWRX-300 reactor design across Southeast Asian markets.
The BWRX-300 is a small modular reactor designed to provide approximately 300 megawatts of electricity, aimed at helping countries meet growing energy demand while supporting energy security and decarbonization goals. Governments across Southeast Asia have been evaluating nuclear power as part of broader strategies to diversify energy sources and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. The first reactor using the design is currently under construction at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site in Canada and is expected to be completed by the end of the decade, which would make it the first small modular reactor operating in the Western world.
Read more at Pulse 2.0
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