Biden Adviser Sperling: Powell’s Right, But Pre-Invasion Inflation Was Due to COVID

On Wednesday's broadcast of CNN's "The Lead," Senior Adviser to President Joe Biden Gene Sperling agreed with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's statement that there was high inflation before Russia invaded Ukraine and argued that the inflation that existed prior to the war in Ukraine was "related to" the coronavirus pandemic because the pandemic caused the economy to shut down and start up again, created supply chain issues and kept those issues from being corrected, and led to production shutdowns and lockdowns in Asia.

Sperling responded to Powell's comments by stating, "Jake, that is clearly correct, and that is not contradictory with anything this president said. The shutting down of the global economy, the starting up of the global economy, the supply chain constraints that happened, you remember the impact Delta had on preventing that supply chain correction, the shutting down of semiconductor production in Asia, the effect that had on global auto production, the lockdowns in China, all those things affected inflation. And of course, this president was out there with a supply chain task force a year ago. So, of course, there was inflation related to the pandemic that took place before that."

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