US Daily Commentary

Research evidence excerpt

US Daily Commentary

Global Markets Research

18 August 2026

Economics - North America

Review & Preview

Research Analysts

Review

Aichi Amemiya - NSI

Import prices: Import prices fell 0.4% m-o-m in July (Consensus: +0.1%) following a

0.3% decline in June. However, excluding volatile fuels, import prices continued to

increase at a decent pace of 0.4% m-o-m. Import prices for non-auto consumer goods

remained unchanged in July, but April was revised up substantially to +1.2% m-o-m from

the previously reported +0.1%, likely due to upward revisions to medical care commodity

prices. Note that import prices are subject to large revisions since the BLS's methodology

changes in early 2025.

North America Economics

Jeremy Schwartz - NSI

Ruchir Sharma - NSI

Import prices for air passenger fares declined 11.0% m-o-m, lower than our expectation.

This component is an input into PCE's price index for foreign travel by US residents (Fig.

1 ). Consequently, we lowered our tracking estimate for m-o-m July core PCE inflation

slightly by 0.8bp to 0.226% from our pre-import price estimate of 0.234% .

Import prices for computers, peripherals and semiconductors continued to increase by

1.8% m-o-m in July, marking the eighth straight monthly increase, which is consistent with

increases in CPI’s consumer electronics prices in the same month.

Housing starts: Housing starts fell sharply to 1239k in July (Nomura: 1325k, Consensus:

1345k) from a downwardly revised 1415k in June. All regions except the Northeast

registered declines. Single-family starts fell to 808k, its lowest level since November 2022.

The volatile multifamily segment also declined in the month.

Building permits rose to 1443k (Nomura: 1385k, Consensus: 1375k) in July from 1374k

previously. Single-family permits, a reliable gauge of underlying housing construction,

picked up in the month.

Overall, data released lately suggest that housing activity remains soft.

Industrial production: Industrial production slowed to 0.2% m-o-m in July (Nomura:

0.5%, Consensus: 0.3%) from an upwardly revised 0.3% in June (0.1% previously).

Manufacturing production grew 0.2% m-o-m (Nomura: 0.5%, Consensus: 0.2%) following

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