Optimism Welcome Here

Happy New Year to you! I am pleased to report some positive economic news from two separate sources, which emerged toward the end of 2025.

The first comes from The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) “2025 ISM Supply Chain Planning Forecast,” published in December. A press release stated that Economic improvement in the U.S. will continue in 2026, according to the nation’s purchasing and supply management executives. “Revenues are expected to increase in 16 of 18 manufacturing industries and 16 of 18 services-sector industries.”

Susan Spence, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee, and Steve Miller, chair of the ISM Services Business Survey Committee, jointly released the projections, which included these excerpts from their manufacturing summary: “Expectations for 2026 are positive, as 56% of survey respondents expect revenues to be greater in 2026 than in 2025. The panel of purchasing and supply executives expects a 4.4% net increase in overall revenues for 2026, compared to a 2.5 percentage point increase reported for 2025 ...”

“Manufacturing’s purchasing and supply executives expect to see overall growth in 2026. They are optimistic about overall business prospects for the first half of 2026 and more excited about faster growth in the second half ...” Spence noted.

The second slice of optimism hails from AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology, which reported on the Fed’s December interest rate cut by a quarter point, “landing at a target range of 3.5% to 3.75%.”

AMT’s Dec. 10 story noted that economic projections by members of the Federal Open Market Committee contained good news: “Forecasts for 2026 show a strong uptick in expected GDP growth, with the forecast rising to 2.3% compared to the 1.8% forecast in September. Inflation is expected to stay above the 2% target for the next few years, and the unemployment rate is expected to begin a slow downward trend after peaking at 4.5% in 2025.”

AMT Economist Chris Chidzik had this to say: “Another voice in the chorus predicting an economic uptick in 2026 is a welcome refrain. Machinery orders have already begun to accelerate as we entered the last quarter of 2025 and continued growth as those machines hit shop floors should be a comforting signal for the cutting tool outlook in 2026.”

Here in this issue, you’ll see more optimism evident – and good business insights – in our cover story interview with Paige Robbins at Grainger, plus in-depth coverage of product trends, as well as brand-new distribution perspective from our columnists, Frank Hurtte at River Heights Consulting and Bharani Nagarantham at Texas A&M. As always, thanks for reading!