President Joe Biden has warned that inflation might last longer than expected and admitted that gas price hikes are becoming a big problem for many households.
“This is going to be a haul. This is going to take some time,” Biden said about rising prices during a May 23
press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. He went on to acknowledge that the price of gas is affecting “a lot of families” and pointed out that his administration worked with governments across the world to release millions of barrels of oil into the market, but admitted that “it’s not been enough.”
Biden blamed food shortages on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine due to which “millions of bushels” of grain in Ukraine were being held up. If these stocks were brought into the market, it would “fundamentally impact positively” to bring down food prices “across the board,” he argued.
The president said that Washington was working with American farmers to deal with the current situation.
According to Biden, the best thing he can do right now while trying to get Middle Eastern nations—including OPEC—to raise oil output, is to keep the American economy growing and create jobs.
He also suggested implementing tax cuts for the middle class and other measures, but seemed to blame Congress for not being able to pass such plans.
“We have a 50–50 senate. It means we have 50 presidents. And I’m having a little trouble getting some of these things passed. But we’re not going to give up. We’re going to keep pushing,” Biden said.
The 12-month
inflation rate in April came in at 8.3 percent, just slightly lower than the four-decade high of 8.5 percent registered in March. Food prices rose by 9.4 percent while energy prices surged by 30.3 percent.
To make matters worse, the Producer Price Index (PPI), which tracks inflation before it hits consumers,
increased by 11 percent in April, thus suggesting that consumer inflation might remain elevated in the months to come.
With regard to gas, the average price of regular gas as of May 23 was a record-high $4.596 per gallon, according to data from the
American Automobile Association. Prices were above $4 per gallon in all states, with five of them seeing prices in excess of $5 per gallon.
“Prices for gasoline, diesel, and other products are high and climbing. Further, those high prices are raising the cost of other goods and services, and here we are with extraordinarily high rates of inflation at both the consumer and producer levels. The actions of this administration suggest little relief anytime soon,” energy economist Karr Ingham said in a recent interview with
The Epoch Times.
Ingham pointed out that the Biden administration is yet to provide the next legally-mandated five-year offshore leasing plan. The current plan comes to an end in June.
The administration had recently canceled the sales of three major offshore oil leases in the country, thus blocking the opportunity to drill for oil in over a million acres and boost domestic production.
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