Either the unnamed AP writer screwed up or there's more than one ISM manufacturing index. The July Manufacturing ISM Report On Business® has the past year showing US manufacturing coming out of a dip.
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That's all the data they're willing to part with for free. They won't even tell you how or why they calculate the damned index. I've never had much respect for these proprietary data sites.
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Fortunately with a bit of digging I found some back data at a congressional website and it seems this past year has been pretty good for manufacturing.
We've been holding solid in the 50-60 range and it looks like we'll be there for the foreseeable future.
Looking at the 99-00 collapse in manufacturing and the recovery that even 9/11 couldn't stop, it really puts the lie to all the crap we're hearing from the "US manufacturing's dead" crowd.
Perspective is everything-- that's why I much prefere BLS manufacturing numbers where we can check out the trends. Which is probably also why the MSM just loves these loopy proprietary indexes.