Import Prices Fell 0.4% in July. Strip Out Fuel and the 12-Month Rate Is the Fastest Since 2022.

by Tomas Ferreira · August 18, 2026

Markets Reporter, US Market Current

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes for July at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and the headline read as relief: import prices fell 0.4 percent on the month, which the release describes as the largest monthly decline since May 2025. Every part of that decline, and then some, came from one line.

Fuel import prices fell 7.2 percent in July, according to the BLS release, with petroleum and petroleum products down 7.5 percent. Natural gas went the other way, rising 5.3 percent. The release notes that lower petroleum prices more than offset the natural gas increase. Nonfuel import prices, meanwhile, rose 0.4 percent.

That split matters more over 12 months than over one. All-import prices are up 5.9 percent from July 2025, but fuel imports are up 25.2 percent over the same span, with petroleum up 26.3 percent and natural gas up 74.3 percent. Nonfuel imports are up 4.5 percent, which the BLS release identifies as the largest over-the-year advance since the index rose 4.6 percent for the year ended June 2022.

A 4.5 percent annual rate on the nonfuel index is the number worth sitting with. It is the part of the import basket that does not swing on a barrel price, and it has not run this fast in more than four years. The 5.9 percent all-items figure sits between the two components rather than near the fuel number, which is what the relative weights of a small fuel share and a large nonfuel share produce.

Inside the nonfuel detail, July's monthly changes ran one direction almost uniformly. Foods, feeds and beverages rose 0.9 percent. Capital goods rose 0.9 percent. Automotive vehicles, parts and engines rose 0.2 percent. Consumer goods excluding automotives were unchanged. Nonfuel industrial supplies and materials was the only one of those five groupings to fall, down 0.5 percent. On those figures, the July headline is a fuel print wearing an all-items label.

Now the two technical facts that determine what this release can and cannot be used to argue. The BLS states in its published questions and answers for the program that the prices used to calculate the Import/Export Price Indexes exclude duties, and that the majority of import prices are quoted free on board at the foreign port, with duty not included. The index therefore measures what foreign sellers charge, not what a U.S. importer ultimately pays at the border after tariffs.

That distinction lands directly on the most eye-catching line in the geographic table. Import prices from China rose 0.8 percent in July, which the release calls the largest monthly increase since the index rose 0.8 percent in July 2008, and are up 2.7 percent over 12 months. Because duties sit outside the index by construction, that 0.8 percent is a rise in the pre-duty price of Chinese goods, not a measurement of tariff pass-through in either direction.

The second technical fact is a basis mismatch that trips up month-to-month comparisons with the inflation reports that precede this one each month. The BLS states in those same questions and answers that all Import/Export Price Index data are not seasonally adjusted; the July news release itself attaches no seasonal-adjustment qualifier to any of the figures above. July's minus 0.4 percent is a raw change. The headline monthly numbers in the consumer and producer price reports are seasonally adjusted. Placing them side by side in a sentence, as is routinely done, is comparing two different treatments of the same calendar month.

The rest of the locality-of-origin table moved in a wider spread than the headline suggests. Import prices from Canada fell 2.1 percent in July and prices from Mexico fell 0.3 percent, while prices from Japan rose 0.6 percent and were up 1.7 percent over 12 months. European Union import prices edged down 0.2 percent. A single all-items figure of minus 0.4 percent is averaging a 2.7 percentage point range across those five origins alone.

The export side had the larger move and drew less attention. Export prices fell 1.3 percent in July, against the 0.4 percent decline in imports, and are up 8.2 percent over 12 months. Agricultural export prices rose 1.0 percent on the month and are up 5.7 percent over the year. Nonagricultural export prices fell 1.5 percent while still running 8.5 percent above July 2025.

Within nonagricultural exports, the weight of the decline sat in one category again: nonagricultural industrial supplies and materials fell 4.1 percent in July. Capital goods exports rose 0.5 percent, automotive vehicles, parts and engines rose 0.7 percent, and consumer goods excluding automotives rose 0.2 percent. As on the import side, the headline is being set by a commodity-linked grouping rather than by the finished-goods categories.

Export prices by destination carried their own outlier. Prices for exports to Canada rose 2.2 percent in July, which the release describes as the largest monthly advance since the index rose 3.0 percent in March 2022. Prices for exports to the European Union fell 1.9 percent, exports to China fell 0.5 percent while remaining 5.6 percent above a year earlier, exports to Japan rose 0.2 percent and are up 10.4 percent over 12 months, and exports to Mexico rose 0.3 percent.

For context on the direction of travel, Table A of Tuesday's release puts June's all-import change at minus 0.3 percent and June's nonfuel change at plus 0.1 percent, both flagged in the table as revised. On those figures July is a second consecutive monthly decline in the headline rather than a reversal of a June gain, and the nonfuel index accelerated between the two months, from 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent.

The next installment, covering August, is scheduled for publication on Wednesday, September 16, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. The line to watch in it is not the headline but the nonfuel 12-month rate, which would need to keep climbing to take out its 2022 comparison, and which by construction will still be telling readers what sellers abroad charged rather than what landed cost was.