We are seeing an acceleration of year end buying in machinery for both new and used equipment. One reason for this is the widespread business expectation that prices for new machine tool inventory ordered from Japan will reflect the 25 percent drop in the past year of the value of the U.S. dollar versus the Japanese yen.

The Japanese importers generally erred on the conservative side when 2010 orders were placed, which means the cupboards are now relatively bare. I’m hearing that 10 percent to 13 percent price increases are coming on Japanese built equipment, indicating that the builders hedged the yen or they just don’t think the American market will accept whopping increases in one gulp.

If we continue to see yen versus dollar in the current range of 80-85 it would not be surprising to see DMG/Mori Seiki USA bite the bullet and build a plant, probably in Davis, California. Other builders could follow suit if they see North America as a growth market.

Nevertheless, we Americans are so ethnocentric we still see ourselves as everybody else’s primary focus. As President Obama just learned at the G-20 meeting, China, India, Brazil, Korea and Southeast Asia are where the growth is if you are a world player.

With Japanese machine tool builders still recovering from an almost catastrophic 2009 they may be reluctant to invest big in a North American market with slow growth, a weakening currency, and an old workforce that is not being renewed by well organized worker training nor liberal immigration policies.

So in the foreseeable future, swallow hard, and pay the price if you want to expand.

Question: Will future sticker shock for new equipment push you to buy used machinery?