LOS ANGELES - The Port of Los Angeles is a testament to President Joe Biden’s unrewarded efforts to address what he calls his top economic priority: inflation.Biden will speak at the port, America's busiest, on Friday with inflation persisting as a problem that has eluded his policy tweaks, deals brokered with the private sector, infrastructure spending and regulatory actions.The port moved to round-the-clock operations last October under an agreement that the White House helped to shepherd.
The goal was to remove backlogs of ships waiting to dock and containers waiting to flow into the country, a logjam that was pumping up prices as the world began to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.The port is now moving out a record 200,000 containers on a rolling 30-day average.
But the forces driving inflation have shifted to rising energy and food costs in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.The Democratic president's speech will overlap with the release of the consumer price index for May, a key measure of inflation.
Economists surveyed by the data firm FactSet expect inflation rose at a yearly rate of 8.2%, only slightly below the 40-year peak of 8.5% set in March.