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Member Briefing May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025

Posted By: Harold King in Daily Briefing,

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Empire State Manufacturing Survey: Activity Shows ‘Modest Decline’ in May

Manufacturing activity fell for a third consecutive month in New York State, according to the May survey. The general business conditions index was similar to last month’s reading at -9.2. Looking ahead firms continued to expect conditions to worsen in the months ahead. The index for future general business conditions remained below zero at -2.0. New orders and shipments are expected to edge lower, and firms expect to reduce capital spending over the next six months. Input price increases are expected to pick up, and supply availability is expected to worsen significantly. Here are some key findings:

The new orders index climbed above zero and, at 7.0, pointed to a modest increase in orders.
The shipments index also turned positive, but only just so, and at 3.5, indicated a slight increase in shipments.
Unfilled orders edged up. The inventories index remained positive at 4.8, signaling that business inventories continued to move higher.
Delivery times were steady, while the supply availability index fell to -11.4, suggesting supply availability worsened.
The index for number of employees came in at -5.1, and the average workweek index was -3.4, pointing to a small decline in both employment and hours worked.
The prices paid index climbed for a fifth consecutive month, rising eight points to 59.0, its highest level in more than two years.
The prices received index retreated six points to 22.9, suggesting that selling price increases slowed somewhat.

Note: The survey was conducted between May 2 and 9^th – before the temporary trade truce with China was announced.

Read more at The NY Fed

U.S. Industrial Production Was Flat In April As Stress From Tariffs Set In

Industrial production was flat in April, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday. This is the second straight weak report as uncertainty stemming from tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. starts to slow activity. Manufacturing alone slipped 0.4% in April, reversing a 0.4% gain in the prior month. Manufacturing makes up three-quarters of total production.

Motor-vehicles and parts output fell 1.9% after a 1.4% rise in March, on the heels of a 10.1% jump in February.
Excluding automobiles, manufacturing output fell 0.3%.
Manufacturing of durables dropped 1.3% with declines across the board.
Capacity utilization inched down to 77.7% from 77.8% in the prior month.

The data suggest the recent tariff-induced pop in manufacturing activity has begun to reverse under the weight of uncertainty. Manufacturing production received a jolt in February largely from a near-record monthly pick up in auto production, and activity continued into March leading the overall manufacturing production index to its highest post-pandemic reading. But as cautioned last month, this 'pick-up' in activity was likely to be short-lived amid tariff uncertainty.

Read more at Wells Fargo

U.S. Housing Starts Increase on Pickup in Multifamily Construction

Overall housing starts increased 1.6% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.36 million units, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. The April reading of 1.36 million starts is the number of housing units builders would begin if development kept this pace for the next 12 months. Within this overall number, single-family starts decreased 2.1% to a 927,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate and are down 12% compared to April 2024. The multifamily sector, which includes apartment buildings and condos, increased 10.7% to an annualized 434,000 pace.

“Economic uncertainty, especially around interest rates and inflation, continues to impact both builder financing costs and buyers’ ability to qualify,” said Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, NAHB’s assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis. “However, recent developments on the tariff front concerning the United Kingdom and China along with major tax legislation advancing in Congress should provide a boost to housing demand and positive momentum for the economy.” Overall permits decreased 4.7% to a 1.41-million-unit annualized rate in April.

Read more at The National Association of Home Builders

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Policy and Politics

Republicans Look To Get Trump’s Big Bill Back On Track With Rare Sunday Committee Session

Republicans will look to get their massive tax cut and border security package back on track during a rare Sunday night committee meeting after that same panel voted against advancing the measure two days earlier, a setback that Speaker Mike Johnson is looking to reverse quickly. Deficit hawks joined with Democratic lawmakers on the House Budget Committee in voting against reporting the measure to the full House. Five Republicans voted no, one on procedural grounds, the other four voicing concerns about the bill’s impact on federal budget deficits.

The Republicans who criticized the measure noted that the bill’s new spending and the tax cuts are front-loaded in the bill, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded. For example, they are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for able-bodied participants in Medicaid. Those requirements would not kick in until 2029 under the current bill. Johnson is not just having to address the concerns of the deficit hawks in his conference. He’s also facing pressure from centrists who will be warily eyeing the proposed changes to Medicaid, food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits.

Read more at The AP

SUNY: Campuses Ready For Free Community College Program

The final $254 billion budget passed last week earmarks $47 million for SUNY Reconnect — a program Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed at the start of the year to provide free tuition, fees, books and supplies for adults ages 25 to 55 who do not have a prior degree. “The SUNY Reconnect program, launching for the Fall 2025 term, will help break barriers to a college degree and provide financial support and flexibility for adult students to enroll, and more importantly, to succeed through to graduation at one of our excellent community colleges," SUNY Chancellor John King said in a statement.

Associate degree students must pursue an education in high-need areas to be eligible, including engineering, technology, nursing and health care, teaching, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence. Community colleges will hold information sessions about the program this summer, and SUNY launched a website Friday to assist potential applicants.

Read more at NY State of Politics

Powell Steers New Strategy for a World Where Very Low Rates Are No Sure Thing

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank was in the process of making adjustments to its overarching policy-setting framework to account for meaningful changes in the outlook for inflation and interest rates following the 2020 pandemic. “The economic environment has changed significantly since 2020, and our review will reflect our assessment of those changes,” Powell said Thursday. “Framework” refers to how the Fed spells out its strategy for setting interest rates. Congress has assigned the Fed a mandate to maintain low and stable inflation while promoting healthy labor markets.

How the Fed does that has largely been left up to the central bank, and since 2012, the Fed has laid out how it seeks to achieve those goals in a broader framework statement. At their meeting 2 weeks ago, officials concluded they should revise this so-called average inflation targeting that they adopted five years ago, Powell said Thursday. The review isn’t likely to influence how the Fed is currently setting interest rates. Powell has previously said the Fed could complete that process and unveil the results by August or September.

Read more at The WSJ

Political Headlines

Health and Wellness

Clinical Trials Are Underway That Are Having Us Rethink Menopause—And Whether Women Actually Need To Go Through It.

For most women, menopause means a gradual decline of progesterone and estrogen beginning in their mid-40s. The menopausal transition, or perimenopause, can last between two and eight years, and even up to a decade, before menopause, the point at which a woman’s menstrual period has stopped for a year. During perimenopause, women can experience a range of associated symptoms, including hot flashes to night sweats, pain during sex, joint pain, and mood and cognitive effects. Though hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can mitigate some of the effects, many of the physical impacts of menopause are lifelong health risks that can’t be treated with HRT, including bone density loss and a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

But what if that timeline wasn’t inevitable? What if women were able to delay the onset of menopause or, more provocatively, end it all together? Medical researchers are tackling those questions, exploring drug therapy and other treatments that will, if successful, result in significantly delaying the onset of menopause. “I think it’s long overdue,” says Zev Williams, director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, who is currently studying how to delay ovarian aging. “For too long, menopause [has been] treated as an inevitability rather than a modifiable health event.”

Read more at National Geographic

Industry News

Trade War Updates

China-to-U.S. Containership Bookings Leap 50%, Hapag-Lloyd Says

Containership bookings from China to the U.S. shot up more than 50% last week after the nations’ agreement to roll back tariffs, the head of German carrier Hapag-Lloyd said Wednesday. Trans-Pacific bookings dropped sharply last month after a surge in March as U.S. importers stocked up ahead of President Trump’s new tariffs. Now that the base U.S. tariff rate on Chinese goods was cut to 30% from 145%, demand has been very strong, Chief Executive Rolf Habben Jansen said on an earnings call with analysts.

“I think we have seen over the last couple of days that bookings have indeed been up more than 50% compared to what we saw the last four weeks,” Jansen said, adding volumes also are up in double-digit percentages from the period before tariffs. He said the Hamburg company expects “a little bit of a surge” in volumes in the coming 60 to 90 days, and potentially some frontloading by importers before the 90-day agreement ends. Anything beyond that would be difficult to predict and depends on the outcome of trade talks.

Read more at The WSJ

PPI = 2.4 US Wholesale Prices Dropped 0.5% Last Month

U.S. wholesale prices dropped unexpectedly in April for the first time in more than a year despite President Donald Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports. The producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — fell 0.5% last month from March, the first drop since October 2023 and the biggest in five years. Compared to a year earlier, producer prices rose 2.4% last month, decelerating from a 3.4% year-over-year gain in March, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale prices dipped 0.4% from March and rose 3.1% from a year earlier.

Services prices fell 0.7%, the biggest drop in government records going back to 2009, on shrinking profit margins at wholesalers and retailers. Wholesale food prices fell 1%, and egg prices plunged 39%, though they are still up nearly 45% from a year ago because of bird flu.

Read more at Yahoo Finance

Consumer sentiment slides to second-lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs

The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022. The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%.

“Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy,” Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said in the release. However, the majority of the survey was completed before the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs between the two countries. The trade situation appears to be a key factor weighing on consumer sentiment.

Read more at CNBC

Industrial Production Up By 2.6% In The Euro Area And By 1.9% In The EU

Industrial production in the 20-nation euro zone rose far more than predicted in March, indicating that the sector's two-year recession may finally be coming to an end, data from Eurostat showed on Thursday. Output jumped 2.6% on the month, exceeding expectations for a 1.8% rise and the previous month's 1.1% gain, as most industrial sectors expanded quickly. Compared with a year earlier output was up 3.6%, above economists' forecast for 2.5%.

Production of capital goods was up 3.2% on the month, a hopeful sign that investments are solid, while durable consumer goods production was up 3.1%. Energy production was down 0.5% on the month, but much of that was likely due to lower energy prices. Output in Germany, the bloc's industrial powerhouse, was up 3.1% on the month while Spain expanded by 1%, Italy by 0.1% and France by 0.1%. In a likely distortion of figures, Irish industry expanded by 14%, fuelled largely by activity among big foreign companies based there for tax reasons.

Read more at Reuters

For The First Time, a CRISPR Drug Treats A Child’s Unique Mutation

For the first time, doctors have treated a baby born with a rare, life-threatening genetic disorder with a gene-editing therapy scientists tailored to specifically repair his unique mutation. The baby received three infusions containing billions of microscopic gene-editors that homed in on a mutation in his liver and appear to have corrected his defect. Doctors need to follow the boy longer to determine how well the treatment is working. But so far the bespoke therapy appears to have at least partially reversed his condition, reducing his risk of suffering brain damage and possibly even death.

Dr Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, a metabolic-disease expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and her colleagues opted to make the necessary correction with a new version of the gene-editing tool CRISPR known as base editing. Whereas conventional CRISPR edits genes by excising or inserting bases, base editing chemically converts one base into another. In all other respects it works like any CRISPR drug: an enzyme known as the editor is guided to the right place in the genome by an RNA molecule designed to match the mutated stretch of DNA. Drs Ahrens-Nicklas and Musunuru had spent years pairing editors with RNA molecules to fix metabolism-related mutations in more common diseases. They felt hopeful they could do the same for KJ on a much shorter timescale. Working in human cells modified to carry his unique mutation, it took them less than two months.

Read more at NPR

Regeneron Prevails Over Amgen In Antitrust Lawsuit, Awarded (at least) $271.2 Million

A federal jury in Delaware put US biotech major Amgen on the hook Thursday for at least $271.2 million in punitive damages arising from an alleged scheme that undercut Regeneron's price for its Praluent (alirocumab). anti-cholesterol drug by bundling Amgen's competing, higher-priced Repatha (evolocumab) with rebates for two expensive, blockbuster medications. Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Regeneron filed the lawsuit in 2022, accusing Amgen of engaging in an anticompetitive scheme to drive Amgen's drug out of the market. Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen denied the allegations and countered that Regeneron's business decisions caused lost Praluent sales.

The Court found that Amgen violated antitrust and tort laws by creating a bundling scheme that illegally leveraged its blockbuster anti-inflammatory drugs Enbrel (etanercept) and Otezla (apremilast) to convince pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to select Repatha as the exclusive PCSK9 category product over Praluent. The jury found that Amgen violated the Clayton Act, the Sherman Act, the New York State Donnelly Act, the California Cartwright Act and Delaware tort law.

Read more at US News

EV Registrations Surge 20% In March On Tariff Fears; U.S. Market Share Hits 7.5%

New electric vehicle registrations surged 20 percent in March as consumers snapped up light vehicles in general before expected price hikes from tariffs on autos and parts, S&P Global Mobility said. EV registrations, not including hybrid vehicles, numbered 115,758 in March, good for a 7.5 percent share of the U.S. light vehicle market. That rose from 7.1 percent a year earlier, the data showed. March EV registrations outpaced gains in the overall light-vehicle market, which increased 14 percent to 1.54 million vehicles, S&P Global Mobility said.

Gasoline and diesel vehicles had a 78 percent share and hybrids accounted for 14.1 percent, the March data showed. The hybrid gain represented a 3.4 percentage point increase from the same month last year, the largest of any powertrain segment. The strong performance for EVs came mostly from newer models, such as the Equinox EV and Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, Libby said. Older models from Tesla, Ford and Kia saw sharp declines. Tesla made registrations gains in March after posting declines in the previous two months. Chevrolet moved into the No. 2 spot among EV brands. Ford fell to third place from second place in February.

Read more at Yahoo

GE Engines to Power Qatar Airways Boeing Order

Last week we learned that Qatar Airways will purchase up to 210 wide-body jets and 400 turbofan engines in an extraordinary order valued at $96 billion, according to the White House. Contracts with Boeing Corp. and GE Aerospace covering the sales were completed during a state visit by President Donald J. Trump to the Gulf state. Boeing secured firm orders for 130 wide-body 787 Dreamliners and 30 777-9s, plus purchase options for 50 more 787 and 777X jets. The specific 787 models were not specified by Boeing, which said this will be the largest order for wide-body aircraft in its history, and the largest order ever for the airline.

GE Aerospace is contracted to provide 260 GEnx engines for the Dreamliners and 60 GE9X engines for the 777s, plus options and spares. It noted this is the largest widebody engine purchase in the history of the firm.  U.S. officials emphasized that the deal would support 154,000 jobs annually at Boeing, GE, and their suppliers annually, and over one million total jobs over the course of the production and delivery of the aircraft.

Read more at American Machinist

Steelmaker Nucor Halts Some Production After Cyber Security Incident

Steelmaker Nucor (NUE.N), opens new tab said on Wednesday it had halted certain production at various locations after identifying a cyber security incident that involved unauthorized third-party access to certain information technology systems it used. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said it is in the process of restarting the affected operations as it investigates the incident along with external cyber security experts.

The company said it will continue to monitor the timing and materiality of the incident. It said it is currently in the process of restarting affected operations, but it did not specify a schedule for full resumption. Nucor has notified federal law enforcement and is working with external cybersecurity specialists to investigate the incident.

Read more at Reuters

Harvard Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It’s an Original.

In December 2023, David Carpenter was deep in the digital stacks of the Harvard Law School Library, sifting through unofficial copies of the Magna Carta for a book project, when he stumbled upon a document unassumingly titled “HLS MS 172.” On the library’s website, the document was categorized as a Magna Carta copy from around 1327. Harvard had purchased it in 1946, from a London bookseller, for $27.50. But Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King’s College London, was convinced it was something far more rare: an original 1300 Magna Carta, of which only six others are known to survive.

The Magna Carta was first issued in 1215 as a check on the power of the English monarch. A group of rebellious barons forced King John to sign it, establishing fundamental rights such as due process and habeas corpus, a legal concept that guarantees freedom from illegal imprisonment. It later inspired foundational legal documents, including the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Throughout the thirteenth century, subsequent kings reissued the Magna Carta several times—events known as “confirmations.” When King Edward I reissued the Magna Carta in 1300, clerks produced “well over 30” copies to distribute around the country, Carpenter says. Only six of those originals were thought to have survived, all of them in England.

Read more at Harvard Magazine

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