Energy costs help push down U.S. import prices
Falling prices for oil and natural gas from abroad helped push down prices for U.S. imports last month, marking a third straight monthly drop for products coming from other countries, the labor Department said Friday.
Prices for imports fell one half of one percent in September, led by a 2.1-percent plunge in energy prices, the government said. Meanwhile, prices for non-fuel imports dipped slightly, by 0.1 percent.
Fuel prices have fallen in four of the last six month, and over the last year have plunged more than 10 percent. That has been reflected, in part, by falling gasoline prices. Excluding fuel, import prices rose less than 1 percent from September 2013 to last month.
However, prices of U.S.-made exports also fell last month, by a slimmer 0.2 percent, continuing a downward trend since April, the Labor Department said. The decline was fueled by a 0.9-percent drop in agricultural export prices, led by a 6.2-percent plunge in soybean prices and 3.9 percent for corn.
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