Prices keep going up in the United States because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US President Joe Biden warns the situation is not going to get better right away. Various measures should, however, make it possible to curb it.
The United States will have to “live with inflation for a while”, acknowledged Joe Biden on Friday in California, after a further acceleration in the rise in consumer prices in May.
“We’re going to live with this inflation for a while,” the US president said at a Democratic Party fundraising meeting hosted by billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban in Beverly Hills, five months before the election. midterm in Congress. “It will come down gradually but we will live with it for a while,” added Joe Biden.
The consumer price index (CPI) in the United States rose 1.0% last month after rising 0.3% in April, the Labor Department said. Over one year, it jumped 8.6%, after +8.3% the previous month. The US government and many economists initially expected transitory inflationary pressures with the exit from the COVID-19 crisis. But rising consumer prices continue to spread to new goods and services as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine weighs on global supplies of oil and food products.
While Americans are very dependent on their car, and often favor fuel-guzzling models, gasoline prices are breaking new records every day, reaching an average of 4.986 dollars per gallon (or 4.55 liters) on Friday, against $3,073 a year ago (+62%).
Emergency measures
In an attempt to curb the phenomenon, the American president is appealing to the House of Representatives, which must vote next week on a text already adopted in March by the Senate. to prevent shipping carriers from inflating their pricesand therefore this is then reflected in the final price paid by the consumer.
These figures should finish convincing the American Central Bank (Fed) to give an additional turn of the screw to its key rates next week at the meeting of its monetary committee.
The institution is indeed on the move, its main lever being to curb demand from consumers and businesses, via interest rate hikes. It has already raised them twice, by a quarter point then by half a point, to the range of 0.75 to 1.00%.