November marked the fifth straight month where the year-over-year growth rate of export prices for industrial products showed moderation, following a stretch of record gains seen over the prior 16 months. This latest figure indicates that the pace of price increases in exports slowed, with November posting the weakest progress since July 2021.
On the import side, prices for industrial products rose by 15.7% in November compared with the same month a year earlier, a rate that sits 3.6 percentage points below October’s reading.
Year-over-year comparisons for export prices within the import-export chain remained positive for 23 consecutive months, while import prices posted gains for up to 21 consecutive months, underscoring an ongoing but easing upward trajectory.
Energy at a moderating influence
The pace of overall annual growth in November slowed relative to October, driven in part by a decline in the rate for intermediate goods and a more tempered rise in energy. Energy prices rose 9.8% year over year, while durable goods surged, lifting their inter-year rate by more than two percentage points as home appliance prices climbed more than anticipated in the same month of the prior year.
In contrast, energy’s annual rate fell by nearly eight percentage points to 7.5%, reflecting higher electricity production, transportation, and distribution costs in the same month of the previous year, alongside a smaller decrease in oil refinery prices.
For intermediate goods, the year-over-year rate dropped by a little over two percentage points to 12.2%, led by lower prices in the manufacture of primary chemicals, nitrogen compounds, fertilizers, plastics, and synthetic rubber, as well as steel and ferroalloy products.
The overall annual rate for the export index excluding energy fell by more than one point in November, landing at 9.9%, the lowest level since December 2021 and just above 9.1%.
Import prices
The moderation in the annual rise of import prices was chiefly driven by energy, which cut its yearly rate by more than 10 percentage points, to 39%, reflecting cheaper crude oil and natural gas and a softer rise in coke ovens and oil refinery costs.
Intermediate goods, however, declined by 2.5 points on a year-over-year basis due to lower prices in the chemical industry, bringing the rate to 13.1%.
The rate for non-durable consumer goods stood at 8.7%, up more than two points from the previous month amid lower food industry prices while maintaining gains relative to the year-ago period.
In November, import prices for energy-related industrial products rose by 10.7% year over year, a pace that was one and a half points slower than in October.