As rising prices at grocery stores, gas stations and pharmacies frustrated many voters during his first term, President Biden launched a populist counterattack: Blame big corporations, not me, for inflation.
But despite facing a tough reelection battle centered on the economy, Mr. Biden hasn’t leaned on that message as often or as naturally as other Democrats, including senators running in battleground districts in the Southwest and industrial Midwest. The Biden campaign hasn’t promoted a message of condemnation of companies for going too high in television or online ads, in contrast to Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who have made the issue a centerpiece of their campaigns and are ahead of Mr. Biden in the polls.
Now some progressives are urging Mr. Biden to follow his senators’ lead and make so-called “greedflation” a central theme of his reelection bid. By taking on big corporations, they say, Biden could bolster the broader Main Street-versus-Wall Street argument he is waging against former President Donald J. Trump, especially among working-class voters of color who he needs to mobilize. And they think polls show voters want to hear the president use stronger language to denounce big corporations.
“This is a winning message for Democrats,” said April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, which is going door-to-door in battleground states as part of a $200 million voter turnout operation. “And with Bob Casey polling better than the president, it’s clear that this is a winning message.”
Inflation has soared under Biden in 2021 and 2022 as the economy emerges from the pandemic-induced recession. The causes are complex, including disruptions to global supply chains, stimulus measures from the Federal Reserve and, to some extent, federal fiscal policy, including the COVID-19 relief bill signed by Trump and the $1.9 trillion emergency spending package signed by Biden shortly after taking office to help people and businesses hit by the recession.
What Republicans are calling “Bidenflation” has become one of the president’s biggest political liabilities in his rematch with Trump. Biden has responded by touting progress toward stabilizing or even falling prices (growth has slowed significantly since a year ago) while also acknowledging that voters are still feeling the pain in their wallets.
Biden has also criticized corporate pricing practices in certain areas, including meat processing, snack foods, concert tickets and gasoline. His administration has worked to cap the prices of prescription drugs like insulin and inhalers, curbed bank overdraft and credit card fees and made air travel cheaper and more transparent, and he has spoken frequently about his efforts on the campaign trail.
“We will stand up to corporate greed to lower the price of gas, food and rent and end junk prices,” Biden told 1,000 cheering supporters in Philadelphia last week.
Still, leaning into that combative message isn’t necessarily a natural fit for Biden, who proudly calls himself a “capitalist” and has long had close, if sometimes conflicting, ties to American business. Some economists close to the White House disagree that inflation is primarily driven by companies raising prices to boost profits.
While Biden enjoys telling homely anecdotes about how Snickers bars have gotten smaller but not cheaper, other Democrats have been much more aggressive on the issue. The push to blame corporations has united many factions within the Democratic Party, including progressives, populists in battleground states, labor leaders and environmentalists.
Brown, who represents a state Trump won by a landslide in the 2020 election, has released several online ads vowing to “crack down on companies that rip through Ohio.” Casey released a campaign ad that shows suited executives sneaking into grocery stores under the cover of night, swapping cereal boxes for smaller ones. Democratic senators in tight races, including Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, have made similar pleas.
“President Biden has a lot of discretion in who he assigns blame to, and he shouldn’t be afraid to voice it,” said Julián Castro, a former Housing and Urban Development secretary who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “Otherwise, they’ll blame you.”
But some of Biden’s progressive allies say the president has spoken effectively and popularly about corporate pricing practices, such as focusing on “junk fees” charged by airlines, concert promoters and others, and that he needs to balance the issue with his broader campaign message, including on abortion and democracy.
“The Senate race is going to bring a focus on issues closer to home,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive group in Washington. Biden is doing exactly the right thing by focusing less on technical, hard-headed debates about where inflation comes from and more on how Americans feel and experience rising prices in their everyday lives, she added.
Liberals’ argument that corporate greed has driven higher prices comes from the recent surge in corporate profits to record highs since the pandemic began. They say many companies, especially those in industries with less competition, are testing how aggressively they can raise prices as the economy reopens.
Biden has focused his arguments about corporate greed on sectors like groceries and gasoline, where profit margins have remained strong even as inflation has begun to fall. White House economists have calculated that profit margins at food and beverage stores have risen 2 percentage points this year since the eve of the pandemic, a rise that could explain some (but not all) of the rise in food prices nationwide.
Many economists, including libertarians and former aides to Democratic presidents, reject that argument, noting that historically there is little connection between profit levels and inflation rates.Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco wrote last month that evidence suggests corporate price increases have not been the “main driver” of higher inflation under Biden, though they also found that prices have continued to rise in certain areas, such as autos and oil.
Republicans in Congress have long accused Democrats of trying to deflect political attention by shifting the blame for higher prices onto companies.
“For the last three years, the American people have suffered inflation,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said last month at a Senate subcommittee hearing on price gouging. “This inflation, like all inflation, is man-made. And the man’s name is Joe Biden.”
Biden has carefully focused his discussion of corporate pricing on the evidence provided by his economic team, said Bharat Ramamurti, a former vice chairman of Biden’s National Economic Council.
“Maybe it’ll be a little more muted,” Ramamurti said, but when it comes to price gouging, “I think he’s been pretty vocal about calling it out when he sees it and the economic data supports it.”
“President Biden’s top priority is beating inflation, which is why the President is taking historic action to continue fighting the corporate greed that keeps prices high,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Few Democrats have pushed the message that corporations are causing inflation more forcefully than Mr. Casey, who is seeking reelection in Pennsylvania and has introduced a Senate bill to crack down on “shrinkflation,” when companies reduce the size of products without lowering the price. Mr. Biden praised the bill in his State of the Union address.
In an interview, Casey acknowledged that Democrats have generally been slow to follow through on his argument for shifting the blame for higher prices to companies.
“We may have been late,” he said, “but now that we’ve started to make this point, I think a lot of voters feel like we get it and we’re trying to do something.”
So far, polls show Trump with a clear lead: A New York Times/Siena College/Philadelphia Inquirer poll conducted last month found that 58% of voters in six key states say Trump would do a better job of dealing with the economy, compared with 36% who said they supported Biden.
But Democratic polls have found that many voters agree that corporations are to blame for inflation: Nearly 6 in 10 voters, including a majority of independents, say corporate “greed” is the main cause of inflation, according to a poll by the progressive group Navigator Research.
The Biden campaign’s internal polling analysis showed similar trends.
Akhenaton Michael, a mental health therapist in Philadelphia, agreed that corporate greed is the “main cause” of rising prices, but after voting for Biden in 2020, she said she’s not sure whether she’ll vote again.
“Before, I could go to the supermarket and buy a bag of chicken wings for $6 to $8. Now it’s $14 to $15 to $16,” said Michael, 55. “I’m not saving as much as I used to. I’ve had to cut back on a lot of things.”
There are signs Biden plans to emphasize this issue more in the coming weeks. His team is developing ads about corporate greed and the tax plan that will be released soon. Campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said Biden “has repeatedly addressed corporate greed” and that “he will be telling that story every day of the campaign in every way, from ads to door-to-door canvassing.”
As for Trump, Biden and his allies are already working to portray him as a friend of billionaires and plutocrats who will do little to address rising costs.
“The effort to curb corporate price gouging is one of the striking differences between Biden and Trump,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has become a leading Democratic voice on the issue. “Trump stands with corporate profiteers. Joe Biden runs against them.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s allies are doing their part to spread the message that corporations are taking advantage of average Americans. The progressive groups Climate Power and Future Forward USA Action launched a $50 million ad campaign that includes a spot in which a family farmer in South Carolina accuses big oil companies of “making billions of yen off of us.”
Ted Papageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union, which has been canvassing doors across the state, said voters are responding to that messaging.
“Price gouging is what resonates with working-class voters,” Papageorge said. “Big Oil and Big Food will have to be reined in.”
John Hurdle He contributed reporting from Philadelphia.
