NEW YORK: If the Federal Reserve wants more evidence of inflation to help justify that likely December interest rate hike, the Fed presidents are going to have to look somewhere other than import and export prices. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported that import prices decline by roughly 0.5% in October, and the nation’s export prices fell by some 0.2% in the month. Bloomberg had the consensus estimates from Econoday pegged at -0.3% in exports and -0.1% in imports.
U.S. import prices were revised to -0.6% for September, after having first been shown as -0.1% on a preliminary basis. Export prices were revised to -0.6% in September, versus a preliminary reading of -0.7%.
The BLS said that lower prices for both fuel and nonfuel imports contributed to the October decrease.
Here is where these numbers will look atrocious. On a year-over-year basis, import prices were down by a whopping 10.5% in October, versus a drop of 10.7% in September. Export prices were down by 6.7% in October from the prior year, versus -7.4% in September’s year-over-year comparison.
