Sun, July 3, 2022
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has criticized President Joe Biden for calling on oil companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, prompting the White House to come to the US leader's defense on Sunday.
"My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril," Biden tweeted Saturday.
"Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now," Biden added.
Bezos said Biden's remarks amounted to "either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics."
"Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this," the US billionaire tweeted Saturday.
Gasoline prices at the pump have become a symbol of broader price rises in the United States, and they are sapping Biden's approval rating ahead of legislative elections in November.
Biden has regularly attacked oil companies, saying they only care about profits and not the well-being of the average consumer.
The companies say in turn they have increased production to try to tame prices but that these are set on the world market and are subject to dynamics that are not under the control of US oil giants.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter Sunday that oil prices have dropped about $15 a barrel over the past month.
"But prices at the pump have barely come down. That's not 'basic market dynamics.' It's a market that is failing the American consumer," she wrote.
Gasoline prices have been above $5 a gallon since early June, which is unprecedented in the car-crazy nation. Prices have fallen slightly since, but remain far from the $3 a gallon level of a year ago.
John Kirby, White House spokesman on national security issues, also defended the president Sunday in an appearance on Fox News.
"The president is working very, very hard across many fronts... to try to bring that price down," Kirby said.
He cited Biden's proposal to suspend the federal gas tax this summer -- this would need congressional approval -- and his decision to tap the US strategic oil reserves to put more product on the market.
"He knows that it is not going to solve all the problems, but it will help if everybody cooperates on this. We could bring the price down at least by about one dollar a gallon," Kirby said.
Jeff Bezos Chastises Joe Biden For Telling Oil Companies To Stop Price Gouging At Gas Pumps
Champion of the ultra-wealthy Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has attacked President Joe Biden for calling out oil companies for price-gouging American consumers at the gas pump.
And the White House came back with some burn.
Biden in a tweet on Saturday called out executives of oil companies running gas stations: “This is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”
Bezos was miffed.
“Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” he tweeted in response. “It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”
Actually it’s neither, the White House slapped back.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre schooled Bezos in a responding tweet that gas prices are still high even while oil prices are falling — giving the lie to his claim of inevitable “market dynamics” (unless those “dynamics” must include price gouging).
“I guess it’s not surprising that you think oil and gas companies using market power to reap record profits at the expense of the American people is the way our economy is supposed to work,” Jean-Pierre slayed.
Twitter wags loved the Bezos shade.
The last time Bezos was this upset with the president was in May when Biden said corporations should pay their fair share of taxes (their taxes were slashed 40% during the Trump administration) to help battle inflation.
Bezos griped that underpaying taxes would have no effect on the nation’s current high rate of inflation. He called for Twitter’s “Disinformation Board” to probe Biden’s message because he claimed the president inaccurately linked higher corporate taxes to lowering inflation.
Higher corporate taxes can in fact lower inflation, according to economists, by tamping down an overheated economy, which causes inflation.
More money in the Treasury from corporations could also help provide aid to people suffering in a post-inflation, cooling economy, by expanding or increasing the amount of unemployment benefits, for example.
Amazon, incidentally, has paid extremely low taxes in relation to its enormous income and wealth. It paid zero federal taxes for 2018 by claiming a $129 million rebate on $11 billion in profits. It was one of 60 of some of the largest publicly traded corporations that paid no taxes that year.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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