9 June 2020
The Chinese economy has stalled. The manufacturing PMI for May was an anaemic 50.6, a touch worse than April’s 50.8. The PMI is a dispersion index, which means that figures above 50.0 indicate expansion, and figures below 50.0 indicate contraction. So manufacturing growth is only just in positive territory. Trivium’s National Business Indicator tells the same story. In the first week of June it had reached 87.8%, compared to 85.3% a month earlier. In particular, new export orders remain very weak as the rest of the world struggles with COVID-19… [read more]