U.S. President Joe Biden blamed a four-decade inflation high-water mark on Russian President Vladimir Putin as he touted his administration’s as-yet unsuccessful efforts to lower gasoline prices.
“We saw in today’s inflation data: 70% of the increase in prices in March came from Putin’s price hike in gasoline,” Biden said at a Poet LLC ethanol mill in Menlo, Iowa. “We need to address this challenge with the urgency that it demands.”
He said his administration would allow expanded sales of higher-ethanol gasoline this summer in an effort to lower fuel prices, Bloomberg reported.
The ethanol announcement is Biden’s latest attempt to tamp down inflation, which imperils Democrats’ chances of keeping their control of Congress in the November midterm election.
The efforts appear to have had a limited impact, as inflation has continued to rise in the past several months, even after Biden and top aides assured Americans it would taper off as the country recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.
A new government report Tuesday showed that consumer prices rose by 8.5% in March from a year earlier, the most since late 1981, a figure that underscored both the painfully high cost of living for millions of Americans and the political challenge Biden faces in the fall elections.
Republicans, and some moderate Democrats, have blamed Biden’s policies, including last year’s $1.9 trillion relief package and efforts to promote clean energy for rising consumer prices.
