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President Joe Biden is set to speak about the latest inflation report, which showed that prices in the U.S. rose at their fastest annual pace since the early 1980s.
Government economists said Friday that prices rose 1% between April and May. The jump last month pushed the national year-over-year price increase to 8.6%, the hottest rate since 1981.
In a statement released prior to his live remarks in Los Angeles, Biden assured Americans that his administration is exploring every option available to help cool costs.
“Today’s report underscores why I have made fighting inflation my top economic priority,” Biden said in prepared the statement.
He again blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for record-high gasoline prices. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline reached a new all-time high on Friday at $4.986.
US President Joe Biden speaks about the economy in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 4, 2022.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
“Putin’s Price Hike hit hard in May here and around the world: high gas prices at the pump, energy, and food prices accounted for around half of the monthly price increases, and gas pump prices are up by $2 a gallon in many places since Russian troops began to threaten Ukraine,” he added. “Even as we continue our work to defend freedom in Ukraine, we must do more—and quickly—to get prices down here in the United States.”
Biden called upon Congress to pass legislation to cut shipping, prescription drug and energy prices, and touted efforts to ramp up U.S. oil and gas production. At the same time, he warned energy executives against abusing a contraction in global petroleum supplies “as a reason to make things worse for families with excessive profit taking or price hikes.”
Economists say that, while the president and his economic team are doing all they can to boost the supply of goods and services, everyday Americans will likely have to wait a while longer for price increases to slow down.
The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank in charge of managing inflation, has started to raise interest rates and pull back on Covid-19 stimulus in an effort to check consumer and corporate demand for loans.
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