May Machine Tool Orders Lag Behind 2000

By Austin Weber

ROCKVILLE, MD and MCLEAN, VA--According to the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association, U.S. machine tool consumption totaled $268 million. This total was up 41.5 percent from April, but down 14.5 percent from $313 million reported for May 2000.

"The pickup in May does not signal a turnaround in the machine tool market," says Don F. Carlson, president of AMT. "The general economic weakness requires that Congress take firm action. A pro-growth program, including capital cost recovery reform, would encourage increased investment in the latest technologies, and would have a positive impact on productivity growth and on the machine tool industry."

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Austin has been senior editor for ASSEMBLY Magazine since September 1999. He has more than 21 years of b-to-b publishing experience and has written about a wide variety of manufacturing and engineering topics. Austin is a graduate of the University of Michigan.