13th
Nomura On The Import Prices Data
Some interesting commentary on the basically in-line data from this morning…
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Import prices declined by 0.4% in August (+13.0% y-o-y), in line with Nomura expectations, but less than consensus (-0.8%). Two volatile headline price categories, petroleum (-2.1%) and food (-0.8%), were responsible for the decline in August. Barring the effect of a lower petrol price, non-petroleum prices increased by 0.3%, bringing them to their fastest year-over-year pace (5.5%) since September 2008. Elsewhere, industrial supplies (affected by lower petrol prices) declined by 0.9%. Import prices for consumer goods excluding autos increased by 0.3% in August and were up 2.0% y-o-y. In a recent article, New York Federal Reserve Bank economists found that “U.S. import prices for consumer goods shipped from China have been rising rapidly in recent quarters—by 7 percent between 2010:Q2 and 2011:Q1”. Export prices increased by 0.5% in August with a large contribution from sharply higher food prices (+3.4%) and a rebound in industrial supplies (+0.4%). We expect producer prices, which are the next measure in the inflation pipeline, to increase by 0.5% in August with core PPI increasing by 0.4%.
