Another month, another lackluster read on the US manufacturing sector which, according to Donald Trump, Joe Biden and then Donald Trump again, will experience a renaissance any minute now.

The ISM headline for November printed 48.2 in the first of this week’s key macro updates for the world’s largest economy.

Technically, that’s a miss. Consensus wanted 49. But really this is just par for the course. No one expects much from this readout and I dare say this oh-so-crucial barometer is by now eclipsed for the purposes of market sentiment by its services sector counterpart.

As the figure shows, November’s sub-50 headline counted as the 34th month in 37 that the marquee measure of factory activity in America printed in contraction territory.

As far as the subindexes, the production gauge was the only real bright spot. It rose back into expansion territory at 51.4. New orders slipped to 47.4, missing estimates.

At 58.5, the prices index remains indicative of pervasive input cost pressure. The employment gauge printed a woeful 44 for November.

The figure above’s pretty unfortunate. There have been just eight >50 prints on the employment index since April of 2022.

The anecdotes accompanying the report were like Buc Nasty’s suit: “Bombed out and depleted.” (For the few readers who’ll get the joke, you’re welcome.)

“Trade confusion. At any given point, trade with our international partners is clouded and difficult,” someone in Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components said, adding that at least in terms of supply chain frictions, the current environment’s worse than the pandemic.

Someone in Wood Products sounded equally vexed. “Most of any kind of ‘planning’ has been undermined by unpredictability due to inconsistent messaging from Washington,” that panelist sighed.

I could engage in the usual gratuitous tariff jokes and dark humor about how no amount of chest-beating populism nor Chinese-style industrial policy can resurrect a sector so thoroughly and perennially waylaid, but I think you get the idea.