Rising import prices put pressure on slowing inflation
Rising import prices put pressure on slowing inflation
We got a couple pieces of economic data today that weren’t exactly moving in the right direction. One was the latest retail sales report. Those were down in January, according to the Census Bureau.
And another was the import price index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that import prices rose in January by almost one percent. Imports of consumer goods got more expensive, along with fuel, industrial supplies, vehicles and food. And that’s something economists will be keeping an eye on.
Up until January, the price of imported consumer goods hadn’t gone up since last May. That’s why it’s a little concerning that those imports got more expensive last month, says Meagan Schoenberger, senior economist with KPMG Economics.
“We’re still on a deflationary path, but the worry is that that trend is reversing too early,” she said.
Then, there’s the price of imported fuel — especially petroleum — which also rose in January.
That can ripple through the economy, said Laura Veldkamp, a professor at Columbia Business School.
“It certainly makes the price of production higher. The price of getting goods to market, where you might go buy them, that gets more expensive,” she said. “And so as a result, we see producer prices going up, and then consumer prices going up.”
Not every type of import is raising a red flag right now. For instance, imports of industrial supplies, materials and other intermediate goods got more expensive. But those are just a small part of what goes into a finished product that a consumer buys, says Menzie Chinn, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“At the final step of production, there’s a lot of stuff that’s added in. So distribution, marketing, services at the end,” he said.
But even as inflation has slowed down, the price of services has stayed pretty high, says Schoenberger.
“If those stay elevated, at the same time that this goods disinflation trend reverses, that could mean stickier inflation this year,” she said.
As a result, Schoenberger says she’ll be keeping an eye on whether import prices keep increasing in the coming months.
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