Inflation began to slow in April in the United States, with gasoline prices falling after surging in March due to the war in Ukraine, but remains very high, affecting the popularity of Joe Biden.
In April, inflation stood at 8.3% over one year, against 8.5% in March, according to the consumer price index (CPI) published on Wednesday by the Labor Department.
This is the first slowdown in eight months.
Despite this decline, the rise in prices remains very strong, still close to the highest level for 40 years that it had recorded last month.
And food prices are experiencing their strongest increase over one year since April 1981 (+9.4%).
Over one month only, inflation also slowed to 0.3%, against 1.2% in March compared to February. Gasoline prices, which had soared in March because of the war in Ukraine, fell by 6.1%.
Rising prices to Putin
The prices of used cars, which had largely contributed to high inflation due to the shortage of semiconductors, fell again in April (-0.4%), for the third month in a row.
However, excluding energy and food prices, so-called core inflation accelerated over one month to 0.6%, against 0.3% in March. But it slowed down over one year, to 6.2% against 6.5%.
Joe Biden has, since the beginning of the week, tried to convince Americans that the White House is doing everything it can to combat this high inflation, which he assured is his ‘biggest national priority. ‘.
On Wednesday, he will visit a family farm in Kankakee, Illinois (northeast), and is due to speak at 2:15 p.m. (6:15 p.m. GMT) on what he calls ‘(Vladimir) Putin’s price hike’ .
/ATS
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