Media Overlook Weak Manufacturing Numbers, Consistent with Rising Trade Deficit

For some reason major news outlets like the NYT and WaPo chose not to report on the Federal Reserve Board's release of data on industrial output for April. This release showed that manufacturing output was flat in April leaving output roughly half a percentage point below the November level. Meanwhile capacity utilization, which is often a forerunner of investment in new plant and equipment, dropped to 77.2 percent, 0.9 percentage points below its November level.

The weakness is manufacturing...