Joe Biden signaled on Wednesday that his “top priority” was to “turn the tide of inflation” as consumer prices accelerated further in October in the United States, even reaching their highest level in 30 years. over a year.
The American president arrived Wednesday in the port city of Baltimore, an hour’s drive from Washington, where he must discuss how his administration intends to go about lowering prices, solving the problem of shortages or even putting back the Americans at work.
“Inflation hurts the wallet of Americans,” admitted the host of the White House in a statement released before his departure.
The occasional closures of factories linked to the Covid, the congestion of the ports caused by the shortage of truckers combined with a strong demand for imported products have considerably increased in recent months the costs of shipping food, furniture, cars, transport. energy and a myriad of other products. These costs, partly passed on to consumers, cause concern and dissatisfaction, contributing to lower Joe Biden’s confidence rating, which has fallen to 43%, according to the FiveThirtyEight site, which summarizes various surveys.
In October, prices rose 6.2% compared to October 2020, after 5.4% in September, according to the IPC index of the Department of Labor. This is the largest increase recorded since the end of November 1990, the ministry said in a press release on Wednesday. Over one month, the price increase amounted to 0.9% last month against 0.4% in September, much more than analysts’ expectations (+ 0.6%).
The Biden administration as well as the American Central Bank (Fed) have been hammering for months that these price increases are “temporary”. An opinion shared by many economists even if voices are raised to evoke a pressure on prices that could last until the end of 2022.
“Economic pain”
“The threat posed by record inflation for the American people is not ‘transitory’ and on the contrary is worsening,” said Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on Twitter on Wednesday. “From the grocery store to the gas station, Americans know inflation is real and (the federal capital) DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” continued Virginia centrist elected official. -Western.
Joe Manchin represents the main opponent in the Democratic camp behind Joe Biden’s gigantic investments, relating to social and environmental measures. According to him, this expenditure, estimated at 1,750 billion dollars, would contribute even more to inflation, an argument shared by Republicans.
Republicans on the House of Representatives’ Trade and Energy Committee felt that the United States was facing a “Bidenflation” crisis. “Spending billions more on taxes and spending will only worsen the crisis Americans are facing,” they tweeted.
In October, in the United States, the increase was indeed generalized to all sectors even if it is particularly marked for energy, housing, food and the automotive sector, said the ministry.
Joe Biden will deliver a speech outside the Port of Baltimore to defend the steps his team has already taken to speed up cargo deliveries and address shortages.
Beginning of port decongestion?
In an attempt to streamline the system, the White House recently pushed for the opening of the port of Los Angeles 24 hours a day in order to speed up the unloading of goods and reduce the queue of freighters waiting their turn to unload.
The president’s economic adviser, Brian Deese, tweeted a graph showing that in a week between Nov. 1-8, the number of containers that had been at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach docks for at least nine days fell by more than 20%. “It’s an early but promising sign that every link in the chain is working together,” according to a White House blog post.
As the holiday season approaches and its deluge of gifts, many of them imported, the US government plans to use part of the recent infrastructure plan, which Joe Biden will ratify on Monday, to decongest ports.
On Wednesday, the president will not fail to praise the merits of this gigantic infrastructure modernization program amounting to $ 1.2 trillion adopted by forceps last week by Congress. The stake, for the Democratic president, is that it begins to produce effects, at least political, before the legislative elections of mid-term, in a year.
This ballot, traditionally complicated for those in power, could well cost the Democrats their slim parliamentary majority.