President Joe Biden has spent the week promoting an optimistic anti-inflation plan – penning an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Monday, sending senior officials to promote his new economic agenda and ending Friday with a positive speech on the Job report of the last month .
“My plans have produced the strongest, fastest, most comprehensive economic recovery America has ever seen,” Biden said Friday. “It’s the foundation of an economy that works for working families. Based on this foundation, we are better positioned than any other country in the world to weather the global inflation we are seeing and enter a new chapter of stable and steady growth.”
But the White House’s efforts to convince Americans that the economy is healthy have been eclipsed by other voices predicting a vastly different future for markets and headlines that contradict the Biden administration’s predictions about the economy have undermined.
Biden’s critics include JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who on Wednesday warned of a looming economic “hurricane,” and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said in an email to executives this week he had a “super bad one.” feeling” in relation to the economy.
“Right now it’s kind of sunny, things are going well. Everyone thinks the Fed can handle it,” Dimon said at a Bernstein conference this week. “This hurricane is right out there down the road, coming our way.”
“We just don’t know if it’s a minor or super storm Sandy. Better get ready,” he said, adding that his company was bracing for “poor results” from the war in Ukraine, rising inflation and Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.
President Joe Biden delivered a speech on Friday on the May jobs report after spending the week meeting with his top economic advisers and outlining his plan to fight inflation. Above, Biden delivers remarks from the White House June 2 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Just a day later, Goldman Sachs President John Waldron echoed Dimon’s comments, saying the shocks to the economy were “unprecedented” and describing the current outlook as “the most complex, dynamic environment I’ve seen in my career.” “.
Then on Thursday, Musk added to the chorus of warnings from business leaders, telling his executive team he wants to cut 10 percent of Tesla jobs and “pause all hiring worldwide” because of his “super bad feeling” in an email Reuters received .
Asked about Musk’s comments on Friday, Biden said that as the Tesla CEO wrote his email, Ford and Chrysler were making new investments in electric vehicles that were creating thousands of new jobs. He also pointed to new positions at Intel.
“So you know, good luck on his trip to the moon,” Biden said of Musk.
The alarms were loud enough to draw the attention of Americans, who are already seeing rising prices on everything from groceries to fuel. And new polls show voters are naming inflation as the number one problem for the country, even as the Biden administration has emphasized its economic efforts to create jobs.
“With today’s numbers, jobs have averaged about 400,000 jobs per month over the last three months. That’s historically robust and a sign that we’re starting to transition to steady growth after rapidly restoring 600,000 jobs per month over the past six months,” Biden said Friday.
“When I took office about 16 months ago, the economy was settling in and COVID was out of control,” he added. “Thanks to the economic plan and vaccination plan that my government put into action today. America has achieved the most robust recovery in modern history.”
Despite the president’s efforts to stimulate the economy positively, his administration’s biggest headline this week was Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s admission that she was wrong about the inflation the US would experience after the COVID pandemic.
“I think I was wrong at the time about the path inflation was going to take,” Yellen admitted to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday when asked if she was downplaying the risk of inflation a year ago.
Yellen, who met with Biden and Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell this week, added that much of the inflation was due to “unforeseen and large shocks to the economy,” including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID -Variants they couldn’t have predicted 18 months ago.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, a Treasury Department spokesman doubled down on Biden’s tune, noting that “there has been historic growth and job creation at record levels and our goal now is to transition to steady and stable growth as the inflation will be reduced”.
But the upbeat jobs numbers — with unemployment at an all-time low — weren’t enough to persuade many Americans who are still holding back on major purchases on fears of inflation.
The secretary’s CNN appearance was one of 20 television bookings for Biden’s top economic officials on Tuesday, according to the White House — an early sign of the administration’s months-long plan to promote a healthy economy ahead of midterm elections this fall.
“I understand the feeling. I grew up in a family about 100 miles from here that if the price of gas went up, you would feel like it was a kitchen table discussion,” Biden said Friday.
“There is no denying that high prices, especially for gas and food, are a real problem for people,” he added. “But there is every reason for the American people to be confident that we will meet these challenges.”
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