Wholesale inflation in the United States shot up 10 percent last month from a year earlier — the highest on record, according to the Was...
Wholesale inflation in the United States shot up 10 percent last month from a year earlier — the highest on record, according to the Washington Examiner.
It was another sign that inflationary pressures remain intense at all levels of the U.S. economy during the Biden administration.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.8 percent from January.
Wholesale energy prices were up 33.8 percent over the past year and food prices 13.7 percent.
The report did not include price changes after Feb. 15, missing a spike in energy prices when Russia invaded Ukraine nine days later.
Excluding food and energy prices, wholesale inflation rose 0.2 percent from January and 8.4 percent from February 2021.
“The high rate of inflation has damaged President Joe Biden politically and undercut support for his spending proposals,” the Examiner reported.
Last week, the government reported that surging gas, food and housing costs pushed consumer prices up 7.9 percent in February from a year earlier — the sharpest spike since 1982.
Inflation, dormant for four decades, re-emerged last year as Biden and the Democrat-led Congress pushed through trillions of dollars in spending packages.
“Our country is facing an inflation bomb, due in part to the Democrats’ money printing,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz warned in August.
Tensions over Ukraine have only pushed commodity prices higher.
“Inflation in the pipeline is showing few signs of decelerating in the near term, especially as the Russia-Ukraine war wreaks havoc in energy and other commodity markets,” economists Mahir Rasheed and Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics wrote in a research note.
“Higher input costs will keep producer prices frustratingly elevated … likely feeding higher consumer prices in the coming months.”
To combat rising prices, the Federal Reserve is set to hike interest rates several times this year, starting this week with a quarter-point rise in its benchmark short-term rate.
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