Why Biden’s inflation message is out of touch with Americans

President Biden’s message downplaying the latest inflation numbers is out-of-touch, according to experts who warn that his remarks make the administration appear unrelatable to most Americans.

Annual inflation hit 9.1 percent in June, the highest rate of price growth since November 1981, despite recent interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. Consumer prices rose 1.3 percent last month alone, driving up the costs Americans face to get groceries and fill up their gas tanks.

Biden acknowledged in a statement after the report’s release that inflation remained “unacceptably high” but then downplayed the significance of the new data, calling it “out-of-date” because it does not reflect the decline in gas prices not captured in the June report.

Experts warned that Biden’s message may prove ineffective to most of the public.

“Biden’s response to the inflation report this morning might have been a little tone deaf,” said Derek Tang, co-founder of Monetary Policy Analytics, in a Wednesday interview.

“Telling them this release is out of date because it doesn’t have the latest data is not really going to be well received as a message,” he continued.

Gas prices have come down since the spike in the price of oil last month, which was responsible for almost half of the total June inflation surge. Biden in his message highlighted those savings as “providing room for American families” while also noting the price of wheat had also come down and was not reflected in the report.

Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the out-of-date messaging strategy from the White House doesn’t get to the real issue.

“Whether it’s 8 percent or 9 percent, both are too high and the real issue isn’t the time frame of the data,” he said. “The real issue is that we have intense inflationary pressures and while the Fed is doing their part on the demand side, we really need policymakers to do their part on the supply side and frankly that just isn’t happening.”

Oil and wheat prices were not the only forces pinching American households in June. Prices for almost everything other than airplane fares and hotel rooms rose at faster rates in June, too, and have shown few signs of slowing down.

Inflation outside of the food and energy sectors hit 0.7 percent in June and 5.9 percent over the past 12 months, according to the CPI report, and shelter prices rose 0.6 percent last month. Motor vehicle repairs, dental service fees, health and auto insurance prices all rose roughly 2 percent each.

“The June CPI numbers were horrible. The next question is whether they will be repeated over the next few months,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a Thursday analysis.

Biden has few easy options to tame high inflation, a global problem driven only in part by the trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus he deployed in March 2021. A series of supply shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine also forced prices higher, catching the Federal Reserve largely off-guard, which pushed the bank into a series of rapid…