President Biden on Wednesday got behind the wheels of pricey luxury vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show — just a day after drawing jeers for throwing an “inflation reduction” party despite worse-than-expected August data that showed US wages aren’t keeping up with surging prices.
The president then drove around a convention center showroom in an electric Cadillac Lyric, which starts near $63,000.
“Jump in. I’ll give you a ride to Washington,” Biden teased reporters while driving the Lyric. “It’s an Uber!”
Moments earlier, the president jokingly inquired about whether the Mustang, which can reach 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, has “a launch button.”
But Biden reserved his highest praise for the non-electric Corvette, which gets an abysmal 12.1 miles per gallon when driven in urban areas.
“It’s a beautiful car, but I love the Corvette,” Biden said of the Lyric — despite the fact that he has been pushing Americans to eschew gas-operated vehicles over environmental impacts.
As he returned to the White House, Biden again stepped on his own messaging by issuing a pro-electric vehicle tweet paired with a photo of himself admiring the carbon dioxide-spewing Corvette.
“You all know I’m a car guy,” Biden tweeted. “Today I visited the Detroit Auto Show and saw firsthand the electric vehicles that give me so many reasons to be optimistic about our future.”
Both Cadillac and Chevrolet are owned by General Motors, which has paid Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of Biden’s West Wing counselor Steve Ricchetti, $340,000 since last year to lobby on its behalf.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last month, offers $7,500 tax credits to the buyers of new electric vehicles.
The light-hearted trip to Detroit followed the Tuesday release of Consumer Price Index data that showed a 12-month inflation rate of 8.3%. The data dashed optimism about a speedy inflation fix and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall 4%.
Biden aides had hoped that a continued demand-driven decline in the cost of gasoline would drag monthly inflation data lower. But lower gas prices were offset by large 12-month jumps in the price of food (up 13.5%), electricity (15.8%), rent (6.8%) and health insurance (24.3%).
Inflation has sapped both US consumer wages and savings.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday that real average hourly earnings were down 2.8% in August 2022 versus one year earlier. Money in bank accounts that don’t pay interest lost 8.3% of its value in the same period.
