The simple version

The figure released this morning tracks what buyers in this country pay for goods arriving from elsewhere. It comes out once a month.

It does not include the charge a government adds on goods coming in. That is not an oversight or a lag: it is built in deliberately, and the agency publishes a plain answer saying so.

Which means the measure cannot by itself settle arguments about whether that charge is being passed along. It records what sellers charged before it.

The numbers

• U.S. import prices increased 1.1 percent in September, following a 0.5 percent rise in August, and the release attributes the advance to higher prices for nonfuel imports and fuel imports (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes, September 2026, USDL-26-1577, released October 16, 2026)
• Prices for U.S. imports rose 8.1 percent from September 2025 to September 2026 (same release)
• Prices for U.S. exports increased 2.2 percent in September after rising 1.2 percent the previous month (same release)
• The agency's published answer to whether these indexes include import duties states that the prices for the items used to calculate them exclude duties (BLS, Import/Export Price Indexes, questions and answers)
• The same answer gives the reason: one of the primary purposes of the indexes is to deflate the foreign trade component of national accounts, which specifically exclude taxes when measuring Gross Domestic Product accounts (same source)
• The same answer notes that an import duty is a tax or tariff collected on imports, typically by a country's Customs agency, and that United States import duties would be placed on imports coming into the United States while other countries' import duties would be placed on exports from the United States (same source)
• Import items are classified by the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, and import prices are based on U.S. dollar prices paid by the U.S. importer (BLS, Import and Export Price Indexes technical note)
• Those prices are generally either free on board foreign port or cost, insurance, and freight U.S. port transaction prices, depending on the practices of the individual industry (same technical note)

Why that charge sits outside the measure

The reason is about what the measure is for. These figures are used to take rising costs out of the trade part of the national accounts, so that what remains is the change in volume rather than the change in what things cost.

Those accounts are built to exclude taxes. A measure feeding into them has to be built the same way, or the two would not line up.

The technical note's description of the prices points the same way. What gets recorded is the figure the buyer pays the seller, on terms set by each industry's own practice.

Those terms cover dealings between a buyer and a seller. A charge paid to a government is not part of that, so the build and the purpose point the same way.

The actual math this measure cannot do

Suppose you wanted to know how much of such a charge reached a household. You would need what was paid to the seller and what was paid in total, and you would take one from the other.

This release gives the first and not the second. No arithmetic on the published figures produces the difference, because the quantity you would need is not in there.

That is worth being exact about. The 1.1 percent and the 8.1 percent are real movements in what buyers paid sellers, and they show what sellers charged before the charge on top, not the charge itself or what reached a household.

The honest reading is narrower than either side of that argument tends to make it. The measure answers the question it was built for and says nothing about the other one.

What this means

When a headline uses this release alone to argue about who absorbs such a charge, the release is being asked more than it measures. The agency's own published answer is the fastest way to check that.

It also explains why two measures can seem to disagree. A figure built to exclude taxes and a figure built to capture what a household pays at the till are not two attempts at the same quantity.

The useful habit is to ask what a measure was built to feed before reading a conclusion out of it. In this case the answer is printed in a question and answer page the agency maintains.

What this is NOT

This article explains what the U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes measure and why they exclude import duties, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics release for September 2026, USDL-26-1577, its technical note, and the agency's published questions and answers for the program, all read on October 16, 2026. It is not a claim about who bears the cost of any tariff, about how much of any charge reaches any buyer, or about whether any trade measure is set at the right level, and it takes no position on trade policy. It is not a forecast of import prices, consumer prices, or any Federal Reserve decision. It states no figure of its own and performs no arithmetic: every number here is the release's, and the article's point is specifically that the subtraction a reader might want cannot be done from these figures. It is not a claim that the agency measures anything incorrectly: excluding duties is published, reasoned methodology, which this article describes rather than disputes. The description of valuation terms is the technical note's own, including that practice varies by industry, so it should not be read as a single rule covering every item. It is not advice about any purchase, loan, security, or fund. This is not a political endorsement or criticism of anyone.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes, September 2026, USDL-26-1577, released October 16, 2026, read October 16, 2026
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes, Technical Note, read October 16, 2026
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Import/Export Price Indexes, Questions and Answers, read October 16, 2026