President Joe Biden is paying a steep price for high inflation — a problem that festered during his first year in office instead of fading away as he suggested it would.
His $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, enacted in March, drove what will probably be the fastest economic growth since 1984 and pulled the unemployment rate down to 3.9% at a quicker pace than experts predicted.
But after unprecedented government interventions and supply chain problems, inflation is running at a nearly 40-year high of 7%. And that has soured Americans’ feelings about the president. It’s left Biden trying to retrofit a policy agenda about winning the future into one that can fix inflation, a problem that did not exist when he took office.
The mix of a strong economy and high inflation has created a paradox for his presidency: Most U.S. households feel confident about their own finances, yet they’re worried about the state of the national economy in ways that have been a drag on Biden’s popularity.
