Import Prices MoM

Import Prices MoM is the monthly percent change in the United States Import Price Index. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes it as the import part of the United States Import and Export Price Indexes. It tracks actual transaction prices for nearly all merchandise imports plus air fares and air freight only.

The index measures change since base year 2000=100, not price levels. An index value of 106.8 means prices stand 6.8% above the base period. Import duties are excluded from the price, and the index does not measure domestic consumer inflation.

Prices cover actual transactions as close as possible to the first day of the reference month. The Bureau releases the index monthly at 8:30 AM Eastern Time, often during the second week after the reference month. Each release appears with export price indexes, locality cuts, and full tables of levels and changes.

Each release carries data for the reference month and revises data for 3 months. After that window values freeze with no further revision. The main use is deflating trade figures, and readers favor annual percent change because the series is not seasonally adjusted.

Fuel swings often drive the headline while other goods show broader import cost pressure. The all goods total splits into five end use parts with example shares.

• Foods, feeds, and beverages, 6.984%: food and farm import prices.

• Industrial supplies and materials, 28.875%: fuel plus metals, chemicals, and building materials.

• Capital goods, 26.099%: machinery including computers, semiconductors, and power equipment.

• Automotive vehicles, parts, and engines, 12.728%: vehicles and parts import prices.

• Consumer goods excluding automotives, 25.314%: household durables and nondurables import prices.

Published splits isolate fuel from nonfuel to reveal when fuel hides broader moves. A quiet headline can hide broad declines elsewhere, so readers always check both parts.

• Matched item repricing: the Bureau reprices the same item each month and divides reference month price by prior month price.

• Missing prices: when a price is missing the Bureau fills it with the group average change. This cell mean imputation is revised by interpolation once the next price arrives.

• Quality change: when specification changes but function stays the Bureau removes the dollar value of the quality change so only pure price change enters. For computers this uses hedonic regression while other cases start a substitute series.

• Weighting and chaining: item ratios are averaged with trade dollar weights from 2 years earlier, then chained onto the prior index value. The index equals the prior index times the weighted ratio, and monthly change equals index change divided by prior index times 100. Weights are updated every year from trade statistics.

• Base and rounding: indexes are rebased to 2000=100 and rounded to 1 decimal, and percent changes come from rounded indexes.

• Simple example: base 100.0 holds fuel at 100 to 105 with ratio 1.05 and weight 0.3. It holds nonfuel at 50 to 51 with ratio 1.02 and weight 0.7. The weighted ratio is 1.029, so the index is 102.9 and monthly change is 2.9%.