Inflation has blipped back up to nibble at Americans’ budgets and patience. While the rise is relatively modest, it’s enough to revive the public’s concerns about the eroding value of their dollars. Worse for the Biden administration, the most severe effects were seen in the price of gasoline, which emphasizes the White House’s vulnerability on economics and, especially, energy. The pain will be felt by consumers, and they’ll be looking for somebody to punish.
Gasoline alone accounted for more than half of the increase; prices were up 10.6 percent from the previous month. The price of a gallon of regular is down from the all-time high of $5.016 on June 14, 2022, according to AAA. But at $3.858 per gallon it’s higher than it was a week ago or a month ago, which means more pain at the pump for people fueling their vehicles.
The nation’s capacity to refine crude oil into fuel and other products fell below 18 million [barrels per day] at the beginning of 2022 and hit its lowest level since 2014,” S&P Global Commodity Insights noted last year
“Refiners are unlikely to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in recommissioning costs for only one or two years of strong returns, against a backdrop of the Biden administration’s promise to ‘end fossil fuels,'” the Institute for Energy Research commented in June 2022 as gasoline prices soared.
A Political Price to Pay
“A majority of respondents to the Redfield & Wilton Strategies/Newsweek poll blamed the Biden administration for the surge in gas prices, with 55 percent saying that the recent increase was ‘primarily’ caused by the U.S. government mismanagement,” Newsweek reported this week of a poll conducted before the release of the latest inflation numbers.
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Article URL : https://reason.com/2023/09/15/inflation-jump-highlights-bidens-vulnerability-on-energy/