The president of the Job Creators Network says “reckless spending” by the Biden administration and congressional Democrats has diluted Americans’ buying power, in a response to a government report Thursday on two key price indexes.
“Persistently rising wholesale prices hurt small businesses, which tend to operate on tiny profit margins that inflation erodes,” Alfredo Ortiz, president and chief executive officer of the Job Creators Network, said in a written statement. “This ongoing inflation that’s creating so much pain among small businesses is a direct result of the Biden administration and congressional Democrats’ reckless spending that has diluted the currency.”
The producer price index, which measures the prices that producers receive, decreased 0.5% in March while it increased 2.7% on a year-to-year basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, two years and nearly three months into President Joe Biden’s four-year term.
The core producer price index, which excludes food, energy, and trade services, increased 0.1% in March and increased 3.6% on a year-to-year basis, the bureau also reported.
“While the mainstream media will promote this month’s reduction in PPI [producer price index], they will ignore how inflation under Biden’s presidency is approximately 15%,” Ortiz said. “For small businesses that can’t raise their prices, they are one-sixth poorer today than when Biden took office.”
Ortiz added:
And the worst may be yet to come. Due to Biden’s reckless policies, nations across the globe are rapidly replacing the dollar as their trading currency. If the dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency, it will rapidly plummet in value.
This would turn today’s high inflation hyper. Inflation’s impact on small businesses and ordinary Americans has put the nation on the verge of a recession.
The Biden White House had a different take on the new numbers.
“Today’s report is further evidence that we are making progress bringing inflation down,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a prepared statement. “The annual inflation rate for producers is 2.7%—the lowest rate in more than two years.”
“On average, prices set by businesses actually fell last month. This follows yesterday’s news that inflation for consumers is down substantially from its peak last summer,” Pierre said. “There is more work to do, but this is important progress for our economy and for American families.”
Inflation rose 0.1% in March, up 5% from March 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday on the consumer price index.
The numbers on inflation “show prices rising more than twice as fast as the Fed’s target 2.0% rate,” EJ Antoni, research fellow for regional economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal after the release of that report. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“Inflation is far from dead, despite the White House taking a victory lap on today’s numbers,” Antoni said. “It’s ironic that they are taking credit for reducing inflation after causing it in the first place.”
“Energy prices are down from record highs, but that is likely to reverse in coming months as global energy production declines,” Antoni said, adding:
Having depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and hamstrung domestic production, Biden has put America in a vulnerable position to meet the coming storm and inflation will continue.
The Fed has also created a $6 trillion problem with its reverse repurchase agreement operations and interest on reserve policy. These factors are creating $800 million every day [to pay interest], which will fuel inflation going forward.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
