Domestic manufacturers, including machine shops, took delivery of $278.6 million worth of cutting tools during August, a significant indicator of the durability of U.S. industrial activity. While that amount is nearly even (-0.8%) with the July total, it is +32.2% above the August 2025 result.

For January-August 2026, cutting tool shipments totaled $2.03 billion, a +22.4% rise over the comparable period of last year. The data is compiled jointly by AMT - the Assn. for Manufacturing Technology and the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute for their monthly Cutting Tool Market Report.

Cutting tools are “the primary consumable” used by operations across multiple manufacturing sectors - automotive, aerospace, construction, defense, energy, and other industrial products - making cutting tool purchases a reliable index of overall activity.

“Cutting tool shipments have increased 20.4% since July 2025,” explained Christopher Chidzik, principal economist of AMT. “During the last expansion of cutting tool demand that began in March 2021, shipments continued to accelerate for 27 months after orders of new machinery went into contraction.

“Investment in new metalworking machinery, as measured by the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders Report, is two years into a still-accelerating expansion,” he emphasized.

Some portion of the current rise in shipment values is due to inflation, including the shortages of tungsten-carbide alloy, as previously reported.

“Through the first eight months of 2026, our industry has experienced significant double-digit growth,” said Mike Stokey, president of USCTI and executive vice president and owner of cutting tool manufacturer Allied Machine & Engineering. “As I previously stated, much of this growth is due to skyrocketing raw material costs, which have caused inflation in the industry. Even without inflation, we are still experiencing significant growth, and this appears to be driven by the U.S. economy.”

“While material cost pressures have inflated the market, there is still a strong base of underlying demand for cutting tools,” Chidzik explained. “The average number of new metalworking machines ordered each month has increased 16% since July 2025, when cutting tool orders began their current expansion, which is growing the total stock of machinery that requires tooling. Factoring out price increases, year-to-date shipments through August 2026 were up 12.5% from the same period in 2025.”