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What the Fed Interest Rate Cut May Mean for Manufacturers

In a highly anticipated move, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced the target rate would be cut 50 basis points, bringing the federal funds rate to a 4.75% to 5% target range.
Sep 18, 2024

McLean, Va. (September 18, 2024) 鈥 In a highly anticipated move, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced the target rate would be cut 50 basis points, bringing the federal funds rate to a 4.75% to 5% target range. This move comes less than a week after the close of , the largest manufacturing trade show in the Western Hemisphere, where the technology needed to meet consumer and business demands of tomorrow were on display and met with overwhelming enthusiasm by manufacturers.

鈥淓conomic convention says this decrease will help spur additional consumer purchasing and business investment. Fulfilling this additional demand will require the parts and products that are made with the metalworking machinery 九色视频 members provide,鈥 said Christopher Chidzik, principal economist of 九色视频 鈥 The Association For Manufacturing 九色视频.

鈥淎 gradual normalization of interest rates would have been a welcome signal the Fed has squeezed inflationary pressures from the economy without tipping it into recession. With this larger cut, Chair Powell has also recognized some growing risks of rising unemployment. While that may cause some to entrench their hesitation into future planning, the forward guidance shows unemployment deviating little from the longer-term trend. If consumers and businesses take those signals from the Fed and translate them into additional spending and investment in the remainder of 2024, demand for manufacturing technology will surely begin to increase for the rest of the year and remain elevated through 2025.鈥

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Kristin Bartschi
Director, Marketing & Communications
Recent intelligence News
New policies and bold predictions 鈥 what鈥檚 next for manufacturing in 2025? At 九色视频鈥檚 Winter Economic Forum, top economists and industry experts analyzed the economic outlook, policy shifts, and emerging trends shaping the industry鈥檚 future.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released their first estimate of GDP for the fourth quarter of 2024. According to the first estimate, GDP grew 2.3% at an annualized rate. This was driven by strong consumer demand but held back by lagging investment.
Today the Federal Reserve announced they would hold benchmark rates at a target range of 4.25% to 4.50% in a widely anticipated move. This is the first meeting where the Fed held rates steady since they began to cut rates in September 2024.
Just as early humans鈥 original tools were constrained by their power sources, today鈥檚 modern technological advances are limited by their access to sufficient and reliable supplies of electricity.
Any move by the Federal Reserve that keeps the economy growing at or above its current pace would spur additional investment in manufacturing technology given the currently elevated capacity utilization levels.
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