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President Joe Biden is scheduled to give a speech on the economy and “lowering prices for the American people” on Tuesday afternoon, the White House said, in remarks that will come after the administration announced it will release oil from the nation’s strategic reserve.
Early Tuesday, the White House announced that the U.S. would release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in coordination with other countries, to help ease rising prices, supply-chain bottlenecks, and surging demand.
See: U.S. taps Strategic Petroleum Reserve in bid to push down gasoline prices
However, U.S. oil futures
CL00,
turned solidly higher mid-morning after dipping sharply in early-morning action.
Biden’s planned remarks come a day after he renominated Jerome Powell to lead the Federal Reserve, calling him “the right person to see us through” an effort to boost employment in the U.S. and also tackle “the threat of inflation” confronting the economy.
Republicans have been using sharply higher prices for food and gasoline in particular this year as a cudgel to attack Biden with next year’s midterm elections on the horizon, while the president has insisted his economic agenda will lower inflation.
The House of Representatives last week approved Biden’s massive social safety net and climate bill, sending it to the Senate, where changes are expected. Republicans say the roughly $2 trillion measure would worsen inflation.
The so-called Build Back Better legislation contains $555 billion in climate programs, many in the form of tax incentives for clean energy. Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin say Biden and Democrats are waging “a war on fossil fuels,” and that their policies are to blame for rising gasoline
RBZ21,
prices.
