by Calculated Risk on 12/22/2022 02:22:00 PM

From WardsAuto: U.S. Light-Vehicle Sales to Weaken Again in December; Inventory Set to Rise (pay content).  Brief excerpt:

If Winter Storm Elliott is as bad as predicted, it will create another headwind to December deliveries on top of inventory-related issues, fear of recession and rising prices and interest rates. Conversely, because the bad weather is hitting broad swaths of the U.S. at a time when most vehicle assembly plants will be closed anyway for the holiday season, production losses should be minimal and end-of-month inventory will not significantly suffer because of it.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows actual sales from the BEA (Blue), and Wards forecast for December (Red).

The Wards forecast of 13.0 million SAAR, would be down 8% from last month, but up 2% from a year ago (sales weakened in the second half of 2021, due to supply chain issues).

Vehicle sales are usually a transmission mechanism for Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy, far behind housing.  This time vehicle sales have been more suppressed by supply chain issues, but sales are probably now also being impacted by higher interest rates.