Biden cites erroneous inflation statistic to make his case about the economy
CLAIM: Inflation was at 9% when President Joe Biden took the oath of office in January 2021.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Inflation was at 1.4% in 2021 as Biden assumed the presidency, having risen from a low of 0.1% in May 2020, two months into the COVID-19 pandemic. It continued to increase steadily in the first 17 months of Biden’s presidency, reaching a peak of 9.1% in June 2022. Data released today shows that as of last month, it had fallen to 3.4%.
THE FACTS: Biden has twice cited this number, which is drawn from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, in the past week, first in a CNN interview on May 8 and again during an interview with Yahoo Finance on Wednesday.
“No president has had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation,” the president said during the CNN interview, in response to a question about turning the economy around. “It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.”