There have been rumblings of higher inflation recently, but here’s an indicator moving in the opposite direction. U.S. import prices fell by the most in more than three years in November, the Labor Department said yesterday. The cost of petroleum products tumbled, and a strong dollar weighed on prices of other goods,
All this points to subdued imported inflation in the near term. Overall, import prices dropped 1.6 percent last month, the biggest decline since August 2015, after a 0.5 percent increase in October. For the 12 months through November, import prices rose just 0.7 percent. That was the smallest annual increase in two years.
In related news, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, the core PCE price index excluding food and energy, increased 1.8 percent on a year-on-year basis in October, after rising 1.9 percent in the prior month. That was its smallest gain since February.
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