The health of the North American supply base

Last year our overview of the health of the North American supplier business concluded that thanks to: “a combination of still-growing (but slowing) vehicle production volumes, costs that are under control, capital burdens that are steadily rising, and attitudes toward pricing that are starting to harden, we [are arriving] at a neutral to mildly negative outlook.”

Generally speaking, that was about right, but too pessimistic: despite continued turmoil in the Mideast (and now Ukraine), weakness in the European markets, and continual fretting over a potential slackening in Chinese growth, the American economic recovery proceeded better than we might have expected