Everything Fell Except What You Import

If a domestic supplier offered you relief this month, the number behind it is real.

July producer prices took 2.9% off industrial chemicals. Aromatics came off 2.6%, which we read here on Thursday as the Hormuz premium beginning to unwind.

This morning the other half printed. BLS released the July import and export price indexes at 8:30 Eastern, and US chemical export prices fell 2.8%, the largest one-month decline in that index since July 2023.

Three separate measures of what an American chemical producer receives, all down in the same month.

The fourth one did not move.

"The relief landed on everything a US producer sells. Why did none of it reach what you import?"

The month the two sides split

The import price index for chemicals excluding medicinals and food additives went from 200.8 in June to 200.9 in July. That is +0.05%, after +2.34% in May and +2.19% in June.

It stopped climbing and stayed precisely where the climb left it (chart below).

Inside that basket, one origin kept going. Chemical manufacturing imports from China rose 1.7% in July, on top of 3.0% in June.

BLS publishes seven origin groups for NAICS 325. The other six all landed within three tenths of a percent of flat: Canada -0.28%, Pacific Rim -0.20%, Latin America unchanged, Japan +0.10%, the European Union +0.24%, Industrialized Countries +0.26%.

June's +3.0% was the first three-percent rise in the China chemical index since December 2021, and July's 115.1 is its highest reading since February 2025.

Measured from the March low of 107.6, it is up 7.0% in four months. The European Union origin index managed 1.5% over the same stretch and is still sitting under its May high.