With inflation at a 40-year high, President Joe Biden headed to corn-rich Iowa on Tuesday with a modest step aiming to trim gasoline prices by about a dime a gallon by waiving rules limiting ethanol blending.
His announcement reflects the ways Biden is deploying almost every weapon in his bureaucratic arsenal to ease price pressures, yet the impact appears to be limited and uncertain. Inflation has only accelerated in recent months, instead of fading as Biden once promised it would after the recovery from the coronavirus recession following last year’s $1.9 trillion relief package.
Tuesday’s government report that consumer prices jumped 8.5% in March from a year ago — the worst reading since December 1981 — only deepened Biden’s challenge in defending Democrats ahead of this year’s midterm elections. More than half the increase came from higher gas prices, which spiked in part because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but costs also jumped for housing, food and other items.
