Late last month, I identified a couple of additional recession “canaries” to complement the yield curve which, prescient as it might be, is a bit of a cliché.

There’s nothing wrong with citing inversions to make your bear case, but you’re not going to win any plaudits for originality, and you may even elicit a few eye-rolls too.

If you want to spice up your dour prognostications, you could cite collapsing money supply growth (paired with a reference to a possible “monetarist renaissance” for good measure) or you might point to Taiwan industrial production.

As noted here a few weeks ago, Taiwan is a bellwether for two kinds of hard landings: Economic and geopolitical.

On the economic front, data out Tuesday suggested the island’s factory output extended a deep slump in April, when industrial production plunged nearly 23% YoY. It was the 11th straight decline.

The prior month’s figures were revised to show a 16% drop, worse than the initially-reported 14.5% contraction. Manufacturing output collapsed by almost 24% in April.

Do note that March’s drop was already the biggest since 2009 excluding January and February, which can be distorted by the Lunar New Year holiday. April’s decline was very nearly the largest since the GFC bar none. The depth of the current downturn has no precedent going back to the financial crisis.

Taiwan’s exports are likewise mired in a deep slump, a function of lackluster global demand, particularly for electronics. Shipments abroad fell an eighth month in April.

For the first four months of the year, exports were down some 21%.

As I’ve (very darkly) joked on a number of occasions this year, exports would be severely constrained in the event of a PLA blockade.