Tomorrow, the Census Bureau will release its latest report on durable goods. It will show how much money businesses spent on expensive, long-lasting equipment in August. Orders for them have picked up this year even though businesses are still facing elevated interest rates, tariffs, and an economic outlook that’s basically a black box with a giant question mark on it.

Mavericks Manufacturing Partners is a company in Escondido, California that makes specialized metal components for the energy and defense sectors. Over the last couple years, the amount of money it’s spent on equipment has gone up fourfold.

“We’re looking for more delivery trucks now,” said CEO Chris Blench. “We bought some new welding positioners. We bought some new welding equipment. We’re buying robots.”

Blench said the company needs all of this equipment.

“We’ve seen a real big uptick in orders, we’re expecting a very strong fourth quarter,” Blench.

 According to Blench, a lot of that demand is coming from the Navy. But the company also makes components for nuclear energy, and that sector is hot now.

“I would say it’s the AI data centers,” Blench said. “And just the power demands that our current infrastructure can’t meet.”

Durable goods spending has been strong for all kinds of equipment behind AI technology.

“Electric components, computers,” said Oren Klachkin, an economist at Nationwide.

He said that spending is overshadowing some weakness elsewhere in the economy. But even though the broader economy might be slowing down, it is still moving.

“It doesn’t mean that investment stops, it doesn’t mean that consumers don’t go out and spend, we’re going to see the economy continue to move, essentially,” Klachkin said.

For some companies a slowdown in consumer spending is prompting investment.

“Because the market’s down, there’s a lot of opportunity,” said Adam Miller, founder of Revel Bikes, a mountain bike brand based in Colorado.

He said consumer demand is weak this year. And that means the manufacturing plants he uses don’t have much to do. So, the company’s using this time to focus on developing new models.

“It takes about two years to develop a new bike, so step one is investing in the design, and the engineering, and creativity of developing the highest-end mountain bike we can and then doing the R&D and development to make those products,” Miller said.

Last month the company bought several molds it’ll use to make new carbon fiber bike frames. Miller said each of those molds costs between $100,000 and $200,000.

“So, it’s a big investment, they’re fairly expensive, they have a two to four-year lifespan, generally in the market,” said Miller.

Miller said the hope is that by the time these new models hit the market, the global economy will look a lot more stable.

Correction (Sept. 24, 2025): A previous version of this story misspelled Oren Klachkin’s name.