DAILYMAIL.COM
President Joe Biden again blamed inflation on ‘Putin’s Price Hike’ on Wednesday
It came soon after Fed chair said Ukraine war is not the primary driver of inflation
Powell said that rate hikes will be decided on ‘meeting by meeting’ basis
The central bank will need to see ‘compelling evidence’ that inflation is coming down to stop the hikes
He acknowledged the risk of recession: ‘It’s certainly a possibility, and the events of the last few months around the world have made it more difficult’
President Joe Biden has again blamed inflation on ‘Putin’s Price Hike’ just moments after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that Russia’s war in Ukraine was not the main driver of rising consumer prices. ‘I’m doing everything I can to blunt the Putin Price Hike and bring down the cost of gas and food,’ Biden wrote in a tweet on Wednesday touting his release of oil from strategic reserves and efforts to help Ukraine export grain. In remarks calling on Congress to suspend the federal gasoline tax, Biden also presented the inflation dilemma as a choice between ‘lower gas prices in the US, and Putin’s iron fist in Europe.’ But earlier Wednesday, Powell acknowledged that inflation was ‘certainly high’ before Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. ‘Would you say that the war in Ukraine is the primary driver of inflation in America?’ Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-La., asked Powell. ‘No. Inflation was high before, certainly before the war in Ukraine broke out,’ the Fed chair said. Russia is a major exporter of fuel and critical minerals used in electronics, Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat crops. Powell said it would be fair to blame Europe’s high inflation on its transition away from Russian oil and gas, but U.S. inflation rates were a more complicated supply and demand issue. ‘If you look at comparable large, advanced economies like ours, you’ll see inflation rates that are quite similar to ours and some cases higher or some cases lower … But there are important differences in the characteristics,’ he said. ‘Ours is more about demand. I would say that for most of the others, theirs is more about energy prices and things like that.’
