President Joe Biden again criticized high U.S. gasoline prices and said he’d announce new actions next week to combat what he described as a key driver of inflation.
“The price of gas is still too high and we need to keep working to bring it down,” Biden said at an event in Los Angeles. “I’ll have more to say about that next week,” he added, without elaboration.
White House officials declined to comment on what steps Biden might take.
Top White House officials previously have said Biden is considering further releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the aftermath of the OPEC+ alliance’s decision last week to cut production targets by 2 million barrels a day. The announcement has outraged the White House and Democrats, who face midterm elections next month that will hinge heavily on voters’ views of the economy, inflation and gas prices.
The president vowed “consequences” for Saudi Arabia over the OPEC+ move in a CNN interview earlier this week. He said the administration is reviewing its options, but declined to specify what options are under consideratio or how long the process will take.
Senior Biden administration officials have also floated the possibility of imposing export limits in an effort to shore up fuel stocks and bring relief to consumers. But such a move could backfire, according to economists and energy experts, and lead to higher prices in New England and on the West Coast.
Biden spoke Thursday after a fresh government report that showed stubbornly high inflation. The core consumer price index, excluding more volatile food and energy prices, reached a 40-year high of 6.6% in September, compared to a year ago.
“We also need to make more progress bringing down the prices across the board,” Biden said as he visited the site of a subway line under construction in the city.
Nationally, the average price of a gallon of gas on Wednesday was $3.91, according to the motor club AAA. That’s up about 4 cents from last week. But in California, filling a car’s tank costs more than $6 a gallon.
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