Claim: This week, President Joe Biden said that since taking office, inflation has not been “skyrocketing.”
At a news conference at the White House, Biden stated, “Look, we have drastically decreased inflation from 9% down to close to 3%. We are in a scenario where we are better equipped versus where we were when we started office, when our inflation was exploding.”
This was in response to the most recent data on the consumer price index, which revealed that inflation increased in March at an annualized rate of 4.6 percent—the fourth consecutive month that inflation has exceeded forecasts.
Conclusion: Not true.
When Biden assumed office, inflation was not out of control. In January 2021, Biden took the oath of office, and the consumer price index had increased by 1.4% over the previous year. The next month saw a 1.7% increase.
The Federal Reserve bases its two percent inflation objective on the personal consumption expenditure price index, which increased by 1.6 percent in January 2021 and 1.8 percent in February of the same year.
It was not until March 2021 that inflation exceeded the Federal Reserve’s target rate. Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law on March 11, 2021, providing $1.9 trillion in stimulus to the economy. Even Democratic-aligned economists at the time, such as Larry Summers and Oliver Blanchard, cautioned that adding so much deficit spending to an already-recovering economy after the epidemic lockdowns would probably drive inflation considerably higher.
With the CPI up 18.94 percent since Biden assumed office, inflation has averaged more than six percent annually, which is three times the Federal Reserve’s objective. Over the same period of Trump’s administration, inflation increased by 5.96 percent annually, or less than two percent annually on average.
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