Two market and economic experts are siding with recent commentary from a former White House chief of staff that inflationary pressures are becoming too much for Americans to bear.
“Another group that’s really been hurting under this administration is what has typically been a core Democratic constituency, which is young people, but they, of course, are the ones that have a disproportionate portion of their income go to things like food and energy,” former assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy Michael Faulkender said Thursday on “The Evening Edit.”
“They’re the ones that are really struggling to buy houses and buy cars due to the high interest rate environment that we’re seeing under this administration,” he added.
In a surprise turn on his former boss, Biden’s ex-chief of staff Ron Klain told MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Wednesday that inflation has become too high and American families are getting hit hardest.
AMERICANS ARE DRAINING THEIR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS, RACKING UP DEBT DUE TO HIGH INFLATION
“People live their lives and they wonder how it affects them and their kitchen table and their family budget. And prices, although inflation has moderated, prices are still high,” Klain said. “The price of gasoline is still high, other prices are still high, and people feel that pinch.”
“On the first day of this administration, they surrendered our energy independence. Then they took the oil out of the emergency reserve. They shut drilling down, most recently, the new mandate about not being able to export LNG, that’s one of the biggest geopolitical things we could have done. So it’s just one continuous debacle after another,” former Chrysler and Home Depot CEO and Chairman Bob Nardelli also told FOX Business host Elizabeth MacDonald.
“We talk about reckless spending. We talk about immigration all adding to inflation and lawless societies,” Nardelli continued. “There isn’t a household in the country today that can have the reckless spending that this administration is doing, versus their internal budget for survival.”
The U.S. benchmark for oil prices has been steadily rising in recent weeks, with prices at $85.71 per barrel on Wednesday and increasing to $86.47 as of Friday morning.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve — which Congress established for emergency situations — currently contains 363.6 million barrels of oil, a 43% decline from January 2021 when President Biden took office, federal data shows. Biden began depleting the reserve in late 2021 to combat high fuel prices.
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“For young people, those under 30, they’re now pointing to the economy as one of the biggest issues, and they’re the ones that are really suffering under Bidenomics,” Faulkender chimed in.
“And as Bob just said, at the core of it is an energy strategy. I know that we often talk about energy primarily as an economic issue, but it is such an important national security issue. Imagine what this world would look like at $40 oil instead of at the $86 that it’s at today,” the ex-Treasury official posited, “if we had pursued an aggressive, energy dominant strategy like we had under President Trump.”
FOX Business’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.