The worldwide manufacturing industry has started off 2025 with a somewhat optimistic viewpoint, presenting a suggestion of improvement over the conclusion of 2024. The latest Manufacturing PMI inched up just above 50 points, showing the prognosis of a gentle rise in production. Although the export orders are feared to weaken a bit, perhaps due to trade tariffs, the output products in the group, such as Production Output and New Orders, have staggered from a minus situation to a little growth.
In Europe, only three target industries related to automation for production have performance hopes in New Orders. However, the vast majority of the manufacturing units in the region are very much below the 50 marks for New Orders and Output. Thus, a combination of both negative and positive aspects is what characterizes the European manufacture industry, which means some industrial sectors are on a sinking level while others are ascending.
Asia comes as a region with different pictures, with South Korea’s manufacturing index climbing to 50.3 in January as the country is poised to benefit from a revival of American economic growth. With respect to the Land of the Rising Sun, the figure stood at 48.7, and the country witnessed such a level last time in April 2024, hence, the continuation groove of the recession notion of the year before is well-known. With the ASEAN manufacturing sector, the situation was that it took the 2025 limp off but went into positive territory of 50.4.
Taiwan’s manufacturers are more cautious with regard to geopolitical issues, in particular to the actions that China is perceived to take against the Taiwanese citizens. Vietnam and Thailand also reported lower sentiment scores, consequently indicating the raised difficulty of these markets. The industrial sector in advanced markets has seen quite an improvement in sentiment scores, especially after the inauguration of the second term of Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America.
Donald Trump’s aggressive trade measures with China and other public geopolitical decisions. It has led to increased volatility and uncertainty in the global market. It is impossible to predict how the situation will develop and with what consequences the changes can affect the industrial sector. Moreover, the changes might potentially bring the new dynamics of power relations and might redefine roles for certain actors in economy and politics.
