"One can ascribe some of that to the strong dollar -- you would expect to see machinery and other forms of manufacturing equipment demand weaken somewhat."
- TD Securities
Orders for durable goods in the United States have surprisingly slipped in February of the current year, even though the majority of analysts predicted this statistical indicator to increase slightly by 0.2% on month-to-month basis. A decline reached 1.4% last month and followed a downward-revised 2% gain in the preceding month. Moreover, orders for non-military capital goods that exclude transportation items diminished as much as 0.4%, after a zero growth in January, which initially used to be positive at 0.3% but was also revised to the negative side. For the core indicator it was the sixth consecutive month with worse-than-estimated data released, while in five out of six times core orders were falling down on a monthly basis.
Experts are discussing some potential factors that could negatively weigh on orders for goods with a period of use of more than three years. Among them, slowdown in global economy is providing American producers with negative impetus, and US growth alone is not enough to carry weakness abroad. Apart from that, economists see unfavourable impact from stronger US Dollar. As a result, American-made goods are becoming less attractive outside the US, and foreigners are switching to buying products from elsewhere, rather than the United States.
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