US manufacturers placed $387.3 million in new orders for metalworking machinery in July 2025, according to the Manufacturing Technology Orders Report from The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT). This represents a -9.5% decline from June, but a +20.1% increase compared with July 2024. By contrast, US Cutting Tool orders saw monthly growth of +4.9% in July, following two months of decline.
Cumulative metalworking machinery orders through the first seven months of 2025 reached $2.91 billion, up +14.4% from the same period in 2024. While order values remain strong, unit volumes continue to lag. The number of machines ordered in July was more than 13% below an average July, highlighting a shift toward higher-value equipment and reinforcing automation’s growing role in capital investment.
Regionally, five areas had orders higher than in the first seven months of 2024; this was led by the South-Central (+40%) and the West (+39%), with strong growth also recorded in the North-Central-East (+16%) and a more modest increase in the South-East (+6%) and North-East (+2%), leaving the North-Central-West (-4%) as the only area in negative territory.
The US Cutting Tool Market Report (CTMR) tracks shipments for tooling on a similar basis to the machine tool survey. This part of the market had been trending downwards in May and June 2025, but this changed in July, with growth of +4.9% being reported, which may be partly due to the impact of tariffs becoming better understood, which reduces uncertainty and allows firms to move forward.
You can download the press release for the USMTO survey from the AMT web-site at https://www.amtonline.org/topic/intelligence, with the CTMR release published on the USCTI web-site at www.uscti.com (go to the News tab); alternatively, you can request either or both releases from MTA and we can make sure you get them when they are published each month.