US manufacturing expands for a fifth month
Industrial production has a pulse again. The interesting question is whether this is a cycle or the first print of a structural reshoring.
The Industrial Brief · Editorial · 17 September 2026 · 4 min
The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing PMI has now held in expansion for five consecutive months. Industrial production grew at a 2.1 percent annualized rate in the first quarter; durable manufacturing ran hotter. Computers and electronics, electrical equipment, motor vehicles, and machinery all contributed. For the first time since the post-pandemic hangover, the production-side data is not an argument against the reshoring story.
Capital, not surveys, is the better tell. Companies announced on the order of $1.4 trillion in planned U.S. manufacturing investment between January 2025 and mid-March 2026, concentrated in semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. Rockwell is pushing a $2 billion domestic expansion. Eaton is tracking a mega-project pipeline measured in the trillions. Policy is still doing work: the advanced manufacturing investment credit was lifted from 25 to 35 percent. The data-center boom is dragging electrical gear and cooling hardware with it.
Five months of expansion does not mean the plants are staffed, powered and permitted. Those are still the constraints.
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