Inflation continues to spiral out of control in America.
And there’s signs that it continues to get worse.
Now, Joe Biden just got hit with one awful piece of inflation news that he never saw coming.
Joe Biden has helped to create one of the worst economic crises in modern American history.
And after well over a year since the inflationary crisis began, there are growing signs that the situation is only getting worse with time.
Now, one shocking inflation report just blew Biden’s narrative of “0% inflation” out of the water.
Reuters reports, “U.S. holiday sales are expected to rise at a slower pace this year, a trade group said on Thursday, at a time when decades-high inflation has left Americans struggling to pay bills, draining some of the Christmas cheer from households.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecast holiday sales, including e-commerce, to rise between 6% and 8% to between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion during November and December.
That compares to a 13.5% jump reported last year, and a 9.3% rise seen in 2020 – a period when supply chain snags, production issues and pandemic-related uncertainties weighed on the festive season.”
The massive slowdown in holiday-related sales can be chalked up to only one thing: inflation.
With the cost of goods and services spiraling out of control compared to this time last year, Americans simply have less money to spend on things like food and gas, let alone gifts and presents.
This means that the traditional holiday spending season, which accounts for a huge percentage of sales for most businesses across the country, is expected to be significantly less compared to the previous two years.
And when adjusting sales for inflation, the figure could end up being even more disappointing.
In short, the inflationary crisis Joe Biden helped to perpetuate has made shopping during the holiday season far more difficult than before for tens of millions of Americans.
What’s more, there is evidence that this slowdown is affecting corporate America as well.
“Companies like Target Corp (TGT.N) and Walmart Inc (WMT.N) have been sitting on mountains of inventory, forcing them to give out early discounts and taking the shine off of major shopping days. E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) even held a second Prime Day event early in October to capture more holiday spending by appealing to cost-conscious buyers early on,” adds Reuters.
The decline in consumer spending growth has resulted in some of the largest corporations in America having to deal with growing inventories on a scale that hasn’t been seen since at least 2019.
Normally this would not be an issue, but the growing inventory levels mean that sales will almost certainly fall off for many companies like Target and Amazon, with the latter having already announced a hiring freeze for the holiday season.
The general slowdown in earnings, combined with the collapse in consumer sentiment this holiday season, are expected to be the first signs of a looming recession which is expected to hit the United States by early 2023.