Jeff Bezos steps up feud with the White House over inflation, arguing prices would rise even higher if Biden's economic agenda passed
- Bezos stepped up his attacks on the White House on Monday.
- He assailed the Biden administration for trying to "muddy" the debate on their domestic agenda.
The feud between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the White House is blasting off to new highs.
"Look, a squirrel!" Bezos wrote on Twitter in response to a White House statement critiquing his perspective on inflation and their domestic agenda. "They understandably want to muddy the topic. They know inflation hurts the neediest the most. But unions aren't causing inflation and neither are wealthy people."
He went on to say that if the administration had succeeded in passing Build Back Better, "inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high."
It's the latest entry in a back and forth between the world's second-richest billionaire and the Biden administration over skyrocketing prices.
On Sunday night, Bezos criticized the White House's proposed Build Back Better Plan, saying that "the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves."
The White House quickly blasted Bezos right back.
"It doesn't require a huge leap to figure out why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face, fights inflation for the long haul, and adds to the historic deficit reduction the President is achieving by asking the richest taxpayers and corporations to pay their fair share," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to the Washington Post.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Bezos's latest broadside.
The defunct $2 trillion Build Back Better plan contained a bevy of new social and climate spending to expand childcare, affordable housing, and provide monthly checks to parents among other initiatives. Democrats intended to pay for it with tax hikes on large firms and the richest Americans — people like Bezos.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia came out against the package at the end of last year and Democrats have been unable to pass a slimmer version so far.
In March, inflation was at a 41-year-high. While prices cooled a bit in April, things are still 8.3% more expensive than they were last year. Some economists argue that the Biden administration's domestic agenda is capable of cooling inflation with tax increases on the super-rich.
"I think @JeffBezos is mostly wrong in his recent attack on the @JoeBiden Admin," wrote Lawrence Summers, a prominent Democratic economist, on Twitter. Summers himself has been a frequent critic of the administration's and the Fed's responses to the pandemic's economic turmoil and rising prices.
Bates also noted that Bezos' tweet came after President Joe Biden met with union organizers, including Amazon Labor Union founder Christian Smalls. Smalls was behind the drive to successfully unionize Amazon's Staten Island JFK8 warehouse — a seismic shift for the company, which previously had no unionized warehouses.
Amazon was accused by the NLRB of "threatening, surveilling, and interrogating" unionizing workers at JFK8.
Bezos previously chimed in on the union vote in Bessemer, Alabama, where workers initially voted against unionizing. He said he did not "take comfort" in the outcome of that vote.
"While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it's clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success," Bezos wrote in his 2020 shareholder letter.