US President Joe Biden, during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, on April 10, 2024 in the Rose Garden of the White House (AFP/ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
He would like to talk about “Bidenomics” but it is “Bidenflation” that sticks to him: campaigning for a second term, the American president once again comes up against the high cost of living, which is parasitizing the success of his economic policy .
The high price level has undermined its popularity and the budgets of American families since the summer of 2021, while blurring its image as a middle-class child, attentive to everyday worries.
In recent months Joe Biden, who will face Republican Donald Trump in November, has enjoyed the relative return to calm on the inflation front.
But this week has been a series of bad news for the Democrat.
On Wednesday, the US Labor Department reported a rebound in inflation and on Friday, the University of Michigan noted a decline in consumer confidence.
“There is concern that the slowdown in inflation is coming to an end,” explains Joanne Shu, who leads this university’s closely followed monthly study on household morale, to AFP.
Enough to make those close to the 81-year-old Democrat nervous, including Ron Klain, his former “chief of staff”, the most strategic position in the American presidential machine.
– Biden and his bridges –
“I think the president spends too much time talking about bridges”, which is not “very interesting”, and meanwhile, “you go to the supermarket and eggs and milk are expensive…” he lamented recently, according to Politico.
Food on sale at a store in Redondo Beach, California, February 23, 2024 (AFP/Archives/Patrick T. Fallon)
Major bridge projects, therefore, and various infrastructures in the four corners of the country, factory establishments, good employment, solid growth… The White House tried, with mixed success, to give a name to this era recovery: “Bidenomics.”
This resolutely optimistic vision does not work when many American families struggle to fill their supermarket carts, accumulate bank overdrafts and have to dip into their savings.
“We have a plan” to manage inflation, Joe Biden assured Thursday, referring to various purchasing power measures that he has launched, on the price of medicines or on housing.
His strategy also consists of criticizing large companies, which according to him accumulate “record profits” on the backs of consumers.
Will this parade be politically effective, in the face of a conservative opposition which relentlessly harasses him on the subject of prices?
“All Americans feel the effects (of inflation). The United States will not be able to endure four more years of this disastrous management,” a Republican elected official from Colorado, Doug Lamborn, declared Thursday on X.
– The price of eggs –
“How inflation evolves between now and the presidential election could weigh heavily on the outcome,” comments Ryan Sweet, economist at Oxford Economics.
The premises of the American Federal Reserve (FED), in Washington, January 30, 2024 (AFP/Archives/Mandel NGAN)
The right accuses Joe Biden of having fueled the price surge with his policy of recovery through public spending and relies on examples that are as concrete as they are unstoppable.
The price of eggs, for example, already mentioned by Ron Klain. Just after the inauguration of Joe Biden, in February 2021, this essential component of Americans’ “breakfast” sold for $1.60 per dozen, compared to $3 last February. Almost double, then.
Sticky inflation is delaying a possible rate cut from the US central bank.
The Fed, which sets the pace for the banks, has the mission of keeping prices under control. If it lowers its rates, it will fuel inflation, since households will be more willing to consume on credit.
So here are the Americans facing a high cost of living, and high interest rates, which are forcing them to postpone their real estate projects, for example.
This is not the first time that Joe Biden has struggled to find the right tone on the cost of living.
When inflation really spiked in 2021, it took weeks or even months to stop seeing it as a “transitory” phenomenon.
Faced with a surge in prices not seen in thirty years, the American president ended up promising, in the fall of 2021, to make it an “absolute priority”.
© 2024 AFP
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