Downshifting — for now

Recent PMI reports for both the goods and services sectors showed that businesses are increasingly dealing with rising input costs and sputtering supply chains, factors that are making them pull back even more on hiring and spending in the short term. And yet: It still appears enough executive teams are retaining the confidence to invest through the noise.

 
• Ingersoll Rand CFO: Firms are still moving forward with longer-term plans

• Analysts: Nippon Steel investment pledge could skew the market

• Permian oil-and-gas companies face questions about peak production
 

An air pocket, but for real this time? Yet different?

Two months ago, right around Liberation Day, I wrote about the likely air pocket that would hit the economy as pull-forward spending ended and leaders down put their pencils to see just how the tariff picture would turn out. President Trump’s retreat on some tariffs and a few deal announcements meant that air pocket didn’t materialize in May. Several observers now expect it to arrive mid-summer, although the dip is likely to be less severe — fewer economists are calling for a recession in 2025 — but perhaps longer-lasting.

 
• Cement association: Consumption will dip but a recession is not probable

• Survey: Wait and see is becoming the No. 1 tariff strategy
 

"The issue of tariffs is driving a wedge on
the much more consequential issue of whether
individuals are part of the problem
or part of the answer."

That’s Robert Brooks, a content director with Endeavor and editor-in-chief of Foundry Management & Technology, writing about human capital in today’s trade maelstrom in “The debate no one is having.”
 

Don't just trust the dashboards

Mike Chisholm recently wrote for IndustryWeek about strategies that can fix ailing operations: “Walk the line, talk to your people and validate what you’re hearing.” Those mantras apply equally to maneuvering through our social-media-soaked and headline-driven trade wars. Yes, it’s about surviving but, as Chisholm says, “even while we were stabilizing, we were laying the groundwork for growth.”

 
• From black hole to break-even: How I turned around a failing division
 

60%

The share of supply-chain digital projects that won't add value by 2028

How to improve your odds of being in the 40%? Gartner analysts say supply-chain leaders need to be strategic about launching and sustaining learning and development programs.
 

What we'll be watching

In three words: Initial unemployment claims. Living with tariffs in a slower-growth environment means many management teams are getting closer to the point where they’ll need to decide just how they’ll handle margin erosion. That may not yet show up in Friday’s May jobs report and it may not come in one big wave. But we can’t keep pushing out that air pocket. Can we?