President Joe Biden warned that inflation in the United States could continue “for a while” after data on Friday showed that politically sensitive price pressures had accelerated unexpectedly in recent weeks.
“We will live with this inflation for a while,” Biden said at a Democratic fundraising event in Beverly Hills. “It will gradually decrease, but we will live with it for a while.”
Cautious comments at an event hosted by billionaire media mogul Chaim Saban came as the administration faced growing pressure ahead of the November 8 by-elections, where control of Biden’s Congress of Fellow Democrats is at stake.
The administration and many professional economists initially thought that inflationary pressures would be “transient” as they weakened as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to recover.
But price pressures have only spread to additional goods and services worldwide, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cut off oil and food supplies from an already sprawling global market.
Consumer inflation in the United States reached a 40-year high of 8.6% in the 12 months to May, with gasoline at a record high and food prices rising, according to the Department of Labor.
Rising spending has become a political headache for the Biden administration, which has tried several measures to lower prices, but said much of the responsibility for controlling inflation falls on the Federal Reserve.
Biden on Friday visited the port of Los Angeles, where he tried to clear the backlog of goods and accused the US oil industry of taking advantage of the shortage of supplies to increase profits.
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