President Joe Biden misleadingly claimed Friday that inflation had gone down if you did not count food and gas, even though overall inflation went up.
“Inflation outside of energy and food, what the economists call core inflation, moderated the last two months,” Biden said. “Not enough, but it moderated, it’s come down and we need it to come down much more quickly.”
Biden reacted to the new consumer price index numbers for the month of May released on Friday morning in a speech at the Port of Los Angeles.
But month-to-month core inflation in May was actually at 0.6 percent, the same percentage as it was in April.
Biden’s team cited the unchanged month-to-month numbers as a sign that core inflation was “moderating” but not down.
Core inflation prices were up six percent in May compared with a year ago, down from 6.5 percent in March.
“Core inflation fell on a year-over-year basis because we’re now over a year into decades high inflation. Last May, core prices were up 3.8 percent, the highest rate since 1992, outpacing expectations of economists. As a result, the year-over-year figure reflects already high prices in May of 2021.”
The price of gasoline approaches close to $8 a gallon at the Chevron gas station located at the intersection of Cesar. E. Chavez Ave. and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Including food and gas, inflation rose to 8.6 percent in May, the highest in 41 years.
Shoppers walk past empty aisles of produce at a Safeway on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Parker Purifoy)
Biden blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the high rate of inflation.
“I understand Americans are anxious and they’re anxious for good reason,” Biden said, adding “we have never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas.”
“Putin’s price hike is hitting Americans hard,” he continued.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet during the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange on June 16, 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland. (Peter Klaunzer/Keystone via Getty Images)
Biden boasted the job market was the strongest it had been since World War II “notwithstanding the inflation.”
“Since I took office, families are carrying less debt on average in America, they have more savings than they’ve had,” he continued, repeating a misleading claim using old data from before inflation was a big problem.
The president did not offer any solutions to solve inflation, despite calling it his “top economic priority.”
He again called for more government spending to make it cheaper to afford clean energy modifications to their homes, cheaper insulin, and cheaper internet.
Speaking at the port, Biden blamed foreign shipping companies for raising their prices on shipping goods from Asia.
“Every once in a while something you learn makes you viscerally angry like if you had the person in front of you, you would want to pop them,” Biden said, referring to the higher prices that shipping companies were charging.
He also blamed Exxon for high gas prices, claiming they were receiving record profits while American families were suffering.
“Exxon made more money than God last year,” he said. “They aren’t drilling. Why aren’t they drilling?”
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