This post from Jeff Matthews is anecdotal in nature. Still, it is a useful reminder that a fall in the value of the dollar is not without its downsides for American manufactures. A quote….

Rohm & Haas, in case you never heard of it, is as plain-vanilla a company as they come. By “plain vanilla,” I don’t mean “low-tech” or “mediocre.” It’s just a low-profile specialty chemicals company that makes stuff you use every day—the computer you’re using to read this, for example, is using semiconductors packaged in Rohm & Haas materials—yet never think about.

Furthermore, the company’s chemicals are at the heart of not only the U.S. manufacturing economy, but the world’s economy as well, with half its business coming from overseas.

And what Rohm & Haas was saying while the aforesaid Bloomberg article scrolled across my machine, was this:

Now, as we speak, we are seeing dramatic increases with no seasonal easing in key raw materials… We now expect to see an increase in the total raw material cost for Q4 on the order of $50 million…. This is a development of the last two or three weeks.

In other words, since the surprise Fed rate cut in late September, prices of the company’s key raw material have spiked.