US inflation just self-made trouble: China Daily editorial

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the media on Friday that for the "desired effects" to lower US inflation, it was worth considering taking steps to reduce the tariffs on Chinese goods.

Her comments came a day after Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh suggested that the US should lower tariffs imposed on non-strategic Chinese goods, such as bicycles and apparel to help combat inflation.

Their comments show the urgency with which the US wants to tame its inflation, which hit a 40-year high last month.

Yet although the Joe Biden administration should put an end to the unprovoked trade war launched against China by the previous administration, it is estimated that inflation would only be reduced from the current 8.5 percent to about 7 percent even if the US removed all the extra tariffs on Chinese imports.

The inflation in the US has been caused by multiple factors, stemming from the Biden administration's misjudgments and shortsightedness in handling domestic and geopolitical issues.

Although the administration was warned that its ambitious bailout policy would stoke inflation, it still pressed ahead with it, and appears content that the policy gave a shot in the arm to the US economy.

But the effects of that financial morphine have not lasted long and rather than help resolve the structural issues plaguing the US economy, it just served to delay the flare-up of the economic woes, while aggravating the social problems in the country.

The Biden administration chose to create false prosperity in the hope that it would gain more time and space in which it could maneuver, without thinking how absurd it was to pin its hopes on defeating the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession simply by printing more bank notes.

The outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, which the Biden administration has fomented, has further compounded the problems by depreciating the value of the round-the-clock bank notes rolling off the printing press by triggering price hikes. The prices of oil, natural gas, food and industrial raw materials have soared sharply, and the upward momentum has been further aggravated by the sanctions it has imposed on Russia.

The Biden administration's blind inheritance and intensifying of its predecessor's self-harming trade policies toward China also show, although inflation is a critical concern for the Biden administration, whose approval ratings are falling as dramatically as prices are rising, nearly everything it does is ironically pro-inflation.

The Democrats are likely to lose their majority in Congress in the midterm elections in November if the inflation is unchecked. And that seems likely if the administration continues to blunder from one mistake to another.