White House adviser: It's an 'all-out effort' to address inflation

Groceries, gas prices and rising rents are tightening budgets across North Carolina.

On Tuesday, WRAL News spoke with people at Big Ed's City Market Restaurant in downtown Raleigh and took their concerns to Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Despite rising gas prices and inflation fears dating back a few months, restaurants aren’t seeing a huge drop in business.

Sales tax collections in January and February in the state were about $165.6 million combined, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Revenue. In the first two months of 2020 before the pandemic, the figure was about $126 million.

“[Vladimir] Putin is to blame for the gas prices,” said Raleigh resident Sally Owens.

Raleigh resident John Suddath was more concerned about trying to resolve the situation rather than on focusing on who to blame.

WRAL News asked Bernstein about steps to help improve the economic situation for families.

“One thing to recognize is that this work is not new,” Bernstein said. “It’s been ongoing for a while, because this inflationary challenge has been ongoing for a while.”

The White House Council of Economic Advisers is tasked with fighting inflation on five fronts: Energy costs, transportation, kitchen table costs, deficit reduction and the labor supply.

“It’s an all-out effort to try to address this elevated inflation,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein said the government has taken steps to speed up the supply chain, which became bogged down at the ports last year.

“Shelves are actually about as well-stocked as they were pre-pandemic,” Bernstein said. “That’s a very important improvement.”

Still, it’s not enough for Raleigh resident Kenneth Bowen, a Tuesday customer at Big Ed’s.

“The government hasn’t gotten a hold on it yet,” Bowen said. “They don’t have a grip on what to do about it.”

In March, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, marking the first increase since 2018.

“The Fed [is] taking steps to slow it down,” said Raleigh resident Sam Ellis. “I don’t think they’ve been aggressive enough, and I don’t think they’ve done it in time.”