{"id":411519,"date":"2026-08-20T04:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/411519\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T04:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:08:16","slug":"import-prices-are-shooting-up-they-could-fuel-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/411519\/","title":{"rendered":"Import prices are shooting up. They could fuel inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"

There isn\u2019t a whole lot of inflation data on the calendar this week. The most important inflation report \u2014 the one the Federal Reserve depends on \u2014 comes out next Wednesday, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its personal consumption expenditures price index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But on Tuesday, new data came out on the price of imported goods<\/a>. Those prices in July were down 0.4% from the month before, according to the Department of Labor \u2014 mostly thanks to lower fuel costs.<\/p>\n

But without the cost of energy, import prices rose. In fact, they were up 4.5% from the same time a year ago. It\u2019s the biggest year-over-year increase since 2022. The most significant imports that are getting more expensive are capital goods.<\/p>\n

\u201cParticularly capital goods that are computers and semiconductors,\u201d said Sarah House, senior economist with Wells Fargo.<\/p>\n

House said that\u2019s because of higher demand from data center construction. In fact, the price of imported computers has risen 17% over the past year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo put that in perspective, even at the height over the post-pandemic reopening supply chain stress, they were up only 4%,\u201d House said. \u201cSo it does show just how insatiable appetite is for all things related to the AI buildout.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data center construction is also pushing up the price of imported metals, including copper and tin, and it\u2019s driving the price of consumer goods higher, according to Menzie Chinn, a professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have an increase in prices of semiconductors, that\u2019s got to be fed into the chain of prices for all sorts of consumer good,\u201d Chinn said. \u201cI can\u2019t even think if my coffee maker is without a chip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higher import prices aren\u2019t necessarily going to have a direct impact on overall inflation. Consumers spend a lot more money on services than they do on imported goods.<\/p>\n

But Oren Klachkin, a financial market economist economist at Nationwide, said consumers are still going to feel higher import costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still in this environment here of inflation still running fairly hot,\u201d Klachkin said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s going to take some time for us to get back down to that softer trend in that inflation data like we saw in, call it pre-pandemic.\u201c<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because other factors drive up the price of an imported good after it reaches the U.S., according to KPMG Chief Economist Diane Swonk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s before tariffs are applied, it\u2019s before it actually shows up on a store shelf for the most part,\u201d Swonk said. \u201cAnd it takes a little bit of time for those things to actually show up, then, in the prices of the goods that we\u2019re actually buying.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, she said the increase in import prices is distinct from other inflationary pressures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives us an early indicator that there are some global pricing pressures out there that we\u2019re having to deal with,\u201d Swonk said.<\/p>\n

And that the Federal Reserve will have to deal with when it makes its next decision on interest rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There isn\u2019t a whole lot of inflation data on the calendar this week. The most important inflation report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6138,132,134,133,143665,6804,13621,1764],"class_list":["post-411519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-ai-data-centers","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-bureau-of-economic-analysis","tag-federal-reserve","tag-imports","tag-inflation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}