Is Biden, at this point, the most inflationary elected president in American history?
No president other than Ford has seen this much inflation in his first 18 months since modern inflation statistics began.
W ith the release of data for June, we have 18 months of data on inflation under President Biden. In terms of inflation, the Biden administration has already earned its place in history. Depending on your preferred point of reference, at this point in its tenure, it’s either the worst since the 1970s or the worst-ever on record.
At this point in his presidency, Biden has presided over more inflation than any president since Gerald Ford, who took office in 1974. But President Ford’s path to the White House was an outlier. He was never elected president or vice president. Among elected presidents, Biden has presided over more inflation than any since at least 1948, when data on seasonally adjusted consumer prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics begin.
The chart above shows the statistics. Specifically, it shows the change in the overall consumer price index during the first 18 months of each president’s tenure, expressed as an annual rate. At 8.4 percent, President Biden is running ahead of everybody besides President Ford.
At 8.0 percent, President Reagan is Biden’s runner-up. But Reagan’s first 18 months mislead more than they illuminate when it comes to his track record on inflation. Muting the roaring inflation that he inherited from President Carter was his “No. 1” campaign issue in the 1980 election. And in office, he succeeded. By the time he left in January 1989, year-over-year inflation was down to 4 percent. That may sound high, but it’s a third of the 12 percent it was at when he took the oath of office in January 1981.
For his part, Biden’s policies alone did not cause the entirety of the surge in inflation he has presided over. Factors like the hangover from the pandemic and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also matter. So do long-run factors like the decline in the share of the population that is working due to aging and demographics.
Even if it is not responsible for the entirety of its rise, the Biden administration is unwittingly drafting a case study in how a White House’s policies can make inflation worse. Biden entered office as a pandemic was constraining the supply side of the economy, and his policies then exacerbated the supply-side constraints. His energy policies increased the price of fuel. His broader raft of new regulations undermines business investment broadly. If enacted, his proposed tax hikes would decrease work and business investment, constraining supply even more.
In March 2021, meanwhile, Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan, raising demand by transferring cash to households and businesses. Economists could always draw lines on a chalkboard to illustrate how decreasing supply while raising demand serves as a recipe for inflation. Until the Biden administration, however, economists lacked an example of a White House with policies that so clearly illustrate those principles. Even the Carter administration, poster child for inflationary government from the 1970s, attempted to lower inflation by decreasing regulation.
Is Biden, at this point, the most inflationary elected president in American history? The consumer price index compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics cannot answer the question, as it does not go back past 1948. For an answer, those armed with estimates of inflation that stretch back to the birth of the United States will need to tackle the question. For now, you can say this: Biden has been the most inflationary elected American president in at least 72 years.