Biden does some mild corporate bashing. And it’s smart politics:
President Joe Biden took aim at corporations for charging prices he said were artificially high even though the rate of inflation has slowed and some shipping costs have fallen.
“Any corporation that has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even as the supply chains have been rebuilt, it’s time to stop the price-gouging,” Biden said at the launch of a new White House supply chain initiative. “Give the American consumer a break.”
While it’s true that the annual rate of inflation has cooled from its high last summer, this doesn’t translate directly into falling consumer prices. It only means that prices are rising at a lower rate.
Prices for some everyday goods have fallen over the past year, a reality reflected in lower Thanksgiving costs this year, for example. And lower costs have in turn left some consumers with more money in their budgets for things like Black Friday shopping, which rose 7.5% this past weekend over a year ago.
Now it’s true that prices aren’t likely to actually come down for most things. It’s just not how it works unfortunately. But certain things do, like high gas and egg prices, the latter of which, it turns out, were a result of price gouging, and they are goods that virtually everyone buys. So the idea persists and in this dog-eat-dog world of economic propaganda, I see no harm in Biden ginning up a little populist corporation bashing for the greater good. And besides, they really could lower prices and, in fact, some are because of competition.