Export Price Index in United States

Measures the change in prices of goods and services the United States exports to foreign buyers. Published alongside the Import Price Index in the same U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes report from the BLS MXP programme, a sibling of the CPI focused on foreign trade.

Price index (base year 2000=100) built from a monthly survey of U.S. exporters covering a representative sample of goods and services; the index level and its monthly (%) and annual (%) change are published, not seasonally adjusted for the annual change.

A sustained rise in export prices improves the U.S. terms of trade (more imports can be bought per unit exported) and usually reflects strength in external demand or in the commodities the U.S. exports (energy, agricultural goods); a fall signals weak global demand or competitive pressure. It is used together with the Import Price Index to estimate the foreign trade deflator in the national accounts.

A smaller, more volatile sample than the domestic CPI; very sensitive to commodities (energy and agricultural goods weigh heavily in the U.S. export basket), so it can give noisy month-to-month signals that do not reflect the underlying domestic price trend.