(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said that despite experiencing the most rapid inflation in almost 40 years in November, U.S. price increases are slowing, in particular for gasoline and cars.
“Today’s numbers reflect the pressures that economies around the world are facing as we emerge from a global pandemic — prices are rising,” Biden said in a statement after a Labor Department report showed a 6.8% annual gain in the consumer price index in November.
“But developments in the weeks after these data were collected last month show that price and cost increase are slowing, although not as quickly as we’d like,” he said.
The inflation gauge rose 0.8% from October, slightly exceeding forecasts, but the annual CPI figure — the most rapid inflation the nation has experienced since 1982 — was in-line with expectations.
Biden said that “half of the price increases in this report are in cars and energy costs from November” and that since then, prices have begun to slide in both sectors.
“Even with this progress, price increases continue to squeeze family budgets,” he said. “We are making progress on pandemic related challenges to our supply chain which make it more expensive to get goods on shelves, and I expect more progress on that in the weeks ahead.”
Republicans have seized on inflation data to hammer Biden for failing to protect U.S. households from a surge in the cost of living. The House Republicans’ Twitter feed referred to October figures, which were also the highest in several decades, as the “Biden boom.” Other GOP lawmakers warned that Biden’s 10-year fiscal proposal, known as Build Back Better, would push inflation even higher.
The bill, which has been passed by the House and faces a close vote in the Senate, includes tax changes, social supports such as child-care benefits and measures to combat climate change.
Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that the president’s proposed legislation would have “no impact on near-term inflation.”
In the longer term the bill will lower costs for things like child care and prescription drugs, and increase the supply of labor, Bernstein said, which will help alleviate inflation.
(Updates with Republican commentary from seventh paragraph)
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