Inflation “was 9% when I came to office.”

Twice in recent interviews, President Joe Biden has made an inaccurate statement about one of the top issues motivating voters this election year: inflation.

First, during a May 8 interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Biden said that inflation “was 9% when I came to office.” 

Then, during a May 14 interview with Yahoo Finance, Biden said the same thing, that inflation “was 9% when I came to office. Nine percent.”

As we reported when Biden made the remark to CNN, inflation was much lower when Biden took office.

Inflation hit 9% — the highest in about four decades — about a year and a half into Biden’s presidency. 

When Biden was inaugurated, year-over-year inflation was about 1.4%. That was during a period when the coronavirus pandemic diminished many types of economic activity, notably travel and hospitality. When economic demand sinks, inflation tends to be low.

From January 2021 to June 2022, inflation rose precipitously, primarily because of supply shortages as the pandemic receded and demand rose. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which put more money into Americans’ pockets when supply was spotty, intensified the increase in prices, as did Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The war sent U.S. gasoline prices to near-record highs.

So, inflation rose under Biden. It also rose for many of the world’s advanced economies. 

Still, 9% was not something Biden inherited, as he phrased it in both interviews.

The White House told PolitiFact that Biden’s point was that the factors that caused inflation were in place when he took office. The White House pointed to the pandemic Biden inherited and the supply chain shortages it caused, including for semiconductors. The White House added that annualized core inflation (a measure that excludes volatile items such as energy and food) had already spiked by the second quarter of 2021, within a few months of Biden’s inauguration.

Economists told PolitiFact that there is no surefire way to determine what portion of inflation stemmed from supply chains, Biden’s American Rescue Plan and Russia’s invasion that occurred early in his second year.

“I have seen various breakdowns but can’t say I have too much faith in any exact numbers,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Biden “was in error” to say inflation was 9% when he took office, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. But he added that “it’s also correct to say some spike in inflation in his first couple of years in office was inevitable if the administration, Congress, and the Federal Reserve wanted to speed the recovery using the tools of fiscal and monetary policy available to them.”

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, agreed that it’s hard to say how much each factor spurred inflation’s rise. But he said that in 2021, U.S. inflation accelerated more quickly than European inflation did, when the U.S. was offering greater fiscal stimulus than European nations.

“The bottom line is that the president cannot avoid some responsibility for inflation,” Holtz-Eakiin said. “At the same time, he is not solely responsible for inflation, either.”

Our ruling

Biden said inflation “was 9% when I came to office. 9%.”

Inflation did hit 9% during Biden’s tenure, but about a year and a half into his presidency. When Biden was inaugurated, year-over-year inflation was about 1.4%.

Some factors that pushed inflation to 9% were in place by the time his presidency started, such as supply chain problems. But others, including the American Rescue Plan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were not.

We rate his statement False.