Inflation, a long political trap of the government

It was a year ago today. “We are at the peak of inflationObserved the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Marie on France Inter, already interviewed in 1^Eh June 2022 on the increase in food prices. The hard part, here we are. » Labels on supermarket shelves saw an unprecedented jump of 4.2% year-on-year. But the consensus was that inflation should come down “in the coming months”As he claimed at the time.

A year later, double-digit inflation (+14.1% on food for a year in May, 5.1% for overall inflation) has taken over the daily lives of the French, eroding their purchasing power day by day. The high price level makes them completely insensitive to the historic decline in unemployment, which the executive claims remains their main concern. Three quarters of them believe that inflation is structural and sustainable., adds Frederic Dab, Managing Director of IFOP. However, the executive continues to adopt a form of voluntarism and reiterates that France is in the process of “Go Over the Top”. “The goal is that we somehow absorb that inflation by the fall.”, assured Emmanuel Macron on TF1, May 15. “At the beginning of the September-October school year, in any case, this is my decision – to break the price spiral., In turn, the Minister of Economy predicted on Saturday, May 20 on France 2. added bravado: “I am not one of those who say ‘the state cannot do anything.’ »

Can the government really stop the rise in food prices, or even reduce them, since it has managed, with a lot of public money, to contain energy with various price shields used in the last eighteen months? Inflation, which had disappeared from collective memory since the 1980s, suddenly resurfaced in the summer of 2021 under the influence of the disorganization of production chains caused by Covid, before being worsened by the war in Ukraine and energy embargoes, and then the difficulties of the French nuclear fleet. Pundits and politicians are rediscovering in real time the insidious ways in which it is gradually contaminating the economy, moving from energy to food to finally affect services – transport, food, tourism – as wages rise. Surprisingly, most of them have never encountered this phenomenon in their lives, which economists themselves believed simply disappeared.