Import Prices Rise 1.1% in September as Fuel Costs Rebound

U.S. import prices rose 1.1% in September after a 0.5% increase in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported October 16. Both fuel and nonfuel imports contributed to the advance, according to the agency’s monthly release. Export prices also increased, rising 2.2% after a 1.2% gain in August. The report measures changes in international transaction prices, rather than the volume of goods moving across borders.

Over the 12 months through September, import prices increased 8.1%. BLS said that was the largest annual advance since an 8.8% increase for the year ended July 2022. The annual figure supplies a longer comparison than the monthly movement: it describes the change from September 2025 to September 2026, not an annualized projection based on September alone. The distinction keeps a single month’s increase separate from the accumulated year-over-year change.

Fuel Reverses Earlier Declines

Fuel import prices increased 4.8% in September, following declines of 0.2% in August and 6.8% in July. BLS attributed the September increase to higher prices for petroleum and petroleum products as well as natural gas. The sequence shows that September’s fuel rise followed two monthly decreases; the latest gain should not be described as an uninterrupted three-month climb in imported energy prices.

Petroleum and petroleum-product import prices rose 4.6% during September, while natural-gas import prices increased 1.6%. Over the year, the movements were considerably larger: petroleum and petroleum products rose 35.4%, and natural gas increased 96.5%. BLS said the natural-gas annual increase was the largest since a 149.5% advance for the year ended June 2022. The monthly and annual comparisons describe different periods and should not be substituted for one another.

Total fuel import prices increased 34.5% over the year. Nonfuel imports, meanwhile, rose 0.7% in September. That nonfuel gain is an important limit on a purely energy-centered reading of the release: BLS explicitly identified both fuel and nonfuel prices as contributors. It would therefore be incomplete to attribute the entire headline import-price increase to petroleum or natural gas, even though fuel recorded the larger monthly percentage movement.

What the Trade Price Measures Establish

BLS explains in its program questions and answers that import and export price indexes measure changes over time in prices of goods or services purchased from abroad by U.S. residents or sold to foreign buyers by U.S. residents. That definition matters when interpreting the release. A price index is not itself a measure of the trade balance, import spending or domestic retail prices, and the September release does not establish changes in those separate measures.

The export side also showed a faster monthly increase in September than in August: 2.2% compared with 1.2%. That result belongs alongside the import figures, rather than being left out of the trade-cost picture. But comparing the two percentage changes does not establish whether the trade deficit widened or narrowed. The reported indexes track price movements; the figures cited here do not supply the quantities needed to make that separate judgment.

The practical reading of the October report is that the prices captured by BLS increased on both sides of U.S. trade in September. Imported fuel rebounded after earlier declines, nonfuel imports also became more expensive, and the annual headline import increase reached its largest reading since July 2022. Those are the findings established by the release; it does not, on its own, assign the changes to a particular trade policy or predict the next movement in consumer prices.