U.S. manufacturing activity contracted for the ninth consecutive month in November, a decline manufacturers attribute largely to President Trump’s tariffs. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI for manufacturing came in at 48.2, a decrease from 48.7 in October. The level was below the 50 score that divides contraction from expansion.

The WSJ’s Chao Deng writes that apparel, textiles, paper products, chemicals and transportation equipment are among the industries that contracted. Transportation in particular has taken a beating from tariffs, which in some cases have led companies to move manufacturing overseas instead of reshoring to the U.S., ISM said. Uncertainty over fluctuating tariff levels has weighed on manufacturers and a pending Supreme Court decision that could nullify many of the duties is also clouding the outlook.

A separate survey of manufacturing activity, S&P Global’s PMI for manufacturing, came in at 52.2, down slightly from October’s 52.5, but still above the 50 break-even line. While factories produced more, there was a steep rise in unsold inventories.

• A private gauge of China’s manufacturing sector showed Chinese factories cut back on activity in November, reflecting weaker growth momentum. (WSJ)
• Asian manufacturers are more optimistic for the year ahead despite demand uncertainty and rising prices, with strong output growth in the Asean bloc. (WSJ)
• South Korea’s exports rose at a stronger-than-expected pace in November, backed by brisk demand for semiconductors and a trade deal between Seoul and Washington. (WSJ)

Chinese rare-earth magnet companies are finding workarounds to their government’s onerous export restrictions, as they seek to keep sales flowing to Western buyers without falling afoul of Chinese authorities.

The Journal’s Jon Emont writes that the companies are tweaking magnet formulas to avoid using certain restricted elements and devising other strategies to get magnets out of the country, like embedding them in motors, according to employees of several large Chinese magnet companies and Western firms that buy from them.

The strategies—which are legal—don’t work perfectly and Western buyers aren’t always satisfied with the magnets they receive. The drive is the latest twist in a long-running battle between China and the U.S. As part of an October deal with the U.S., China agreed to postpone certain impending restrictions, although Western businesses worry the supply will nonetheless be insufficient.

Climate change is melting sea ice and rekindling dreams that have beguiled seafarers for centuries: finding an alternative shipping route to Asia around the North Pole.

Fueling the dream is a widespread idea that the Northwest Passage—a labyrinthine network of straits and channels connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic—will soon become a sustainable freight thoroughfare. The West, lagging behind Russia in the Arctic, has commercial and strategic interests in making that happen.

It won’t anytime soon. The Journal’s Sune Engel Rasmussen sailed for three weeks on a cargo ship through the Canadian Arctic and experienced why, in a paradox of global warming, thawing ice isn’t making Arctic waters easier to navigate. It makes them more dangerous.

• Americans showed up for post-Thanksgiving shopping—especially online–with U.S. consumers spending about $30 billion online between the holiday and Sunday. In-store sales grew 1.7% from a year earlier, data from Adobe show. (Barron’s)
• Shopify experienced an outage on Cyber Monday that interrupted transactions for some merchants on its e-commerce platform during one of the busiest shopping days of the year. (WSJ)
• Canada’s Algoma Steel said it would cut about 1,000 jobs–about a third of its workforce–as the company shuts down production that became financially unsustainable with U.S. tariffs. (WSJ)
• Yankee Candle and Sharpie maker Newell Brands will lay off about 10% of its professional and clerical employees, or over 900 workers, as part of a cost-savings plan. (WSJ)
• Airbus identified a quality issue with metal panels it uses to build its A320 family of aircraft, a fresh setback days after the company warned that thousands of the jets required an urgent software fix. (WSJ)
• Barrick Mining is considering spinning off its North American gold assets into a listed business. (WSJ)
• The National Association of Waterfront Employers said the proposed merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern could curb competition and erode intermodal reliability at American ports. (Journal of Commerce)
• Costco Wholesale sued the Trump administration to make sure it is eligible for refunds if the Supreme Court strikes down a signature tariffs policy. (Bloomberg)
• The site of U.S. Steel’s planned American steelworks will be shortlisted as early as June or July of next year, an executive from owner Nippon Steel said. (Nikkei Asia)
• Operations started to resume at Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port after the deadly Cyclone Ditwah swept the island. (The Loadstar)
• Half of the respondents to an A.P. Moller-Maersk survey of European supply-chain professionals expressed “deep concern” about geopolitics and tariffs over the next one to two years. (SupplyChainBrain)

Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.