There was a time when Caterpillar was considered a key bellwether for trends in global heavy industries, and thus a proxy for the manufacturing sector. However, over the past 3 years that has not been the case for one simple reason: if one looks only at trends revealed by CAT’s retail sales the global economy has been mired not in a recession but an unprecedented depression, one which has now lasted some 43 months. That’s how long CAT has gone without a single positive month in global retail sales, well over double the duration of the acute collapse in demand following the financial crisis.
Since there is little we can add to this story that we haven’t sasid for the past 42 months in our monthly monitoring of demand for CAT products, we will just lay out the breakdown:
- Asia Pacific: down 7%,
- Europe, Africa, and Middle East: down 4%
- Latin America: down 38%
- North America: down 12%
- Total: down 12%
And while there was a silver lining in construction industries, wwhere Asia/Pac and EAME posted a welcome rebound of 1% and 3%, respectively, the collapse in demand for resource industries machine continues at an unprecedented pace:
- Asia Pacific: down 28%,
- Europe, Africa, and Middle East: down 24%
- Latin America: down 41%
- North America: down 31%
- Total: down 30%
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