WASHINGTON
DC —
Americans paid more for gasoline, food, and other essentials last month amid an
ongoing wave of record inflation that
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made worse,
according to government data released Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
The Labor Department’s consumer price index
(CPI) climbed 8.5 percent over the 12 months to March, a rate — not seen since
December 1981 — that added pressure to President Joe Biden’s administration
even as it looks for ways to punish Moscow for the attack on its neighbor.
Prices have surged across the world’s largest
economy as it tries to recover from the
COVID-19 pandemic, dragging Biden’s
approval ratings lower, though the March data contained signs that the spike
was rounding off.
“The
Russia-Ukraine war has added further
fuel to the blazing rate of inflation via higher energy, food, and commodity
prices that are turbocharged by a worsening in supply chain problems,” Kathy
Bostjancic of Oxford Economics said.
Compared to February, prices rose 1.2
percent, within analysts’ forecasts, but if there was good news to be found in
the data, it was in “core” prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy
sectors. These increased 0.3 percent last month, less than economists
anticipated.
The data nonetheless underscored the potency
of the price jumps and bolstered the case that the
Federal Reserve will take
aggressive action at its policy meeting next month, likely raising rates by
half a percentage point as opposed to the quarter-point increase agreed to last
month.
“With labor shortages pressuring firms to
raise wages, we are in the midst of a wage-price inflation cycle that will
require extreme action on the part of the Fed to rid the economy of the
spreading inflation threat,” economist Joel Naroff said.
While the
US economy has bounced back
strongly from the mass layoffs that marked the pandemic’s start, inflation
began bedeviling the recovery last year, as businesses struggled to find enough
workers and supplies, the Fed kept interest rates low, and Congress approved
stimulus measures that drove up demand among American consumers.
Biden’s public support has dropped as prices
have increased, leaving the
White House scrambling to offer relief, including
by releasing strategic oil supplies to lower prices at the pump and, before the
data’s release on Tuesday, waiving a prohibition on selling a lower-price
gasoline blend during the summer months.
But the most potent actor in Washington
against inflation is the Fed, and their rate increases are indeed expected to
lower prices in the months to come, though economists warn the tightening could
also cause a recession.
Until then, the Labor Department data showed
Americans are facing real financial pain when they go to purchase things they
cannot avoid.
Gasoline prices rose 18.3 percent last month,
accounting for half the overall increase in CPI. Prices for shelter, the
category including rents, rose 0.5 percent.
Food prices rose one percent overall, while
prices for groceries were up 1.5 percent in the month, and 10 percent over the
past year -- the largest such increase since March 1981, according to the data.
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