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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and life.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the Spectator. I am delighted to be

joined by the Spectator's economics editor, Kate Andrews, and we're going to be talking about

Biden inflation. Kate, it seems pretty obvious to everyone now that Biden inflation, which is the name that's been given to inflation in the US, is a serious problem for Joe Biden's administration.

And it took them a while to accept that it was. They tried to dismiss it as transitory for a while.

But now we have 40-year hike in prices and people are angry about it and the Biden administration are

expecting this to be a major issue in the midterms. However, there was perhaps a slight glimmer

of hope for Biden yesterday with the figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which showed

a slight dip in inflation, but it's not enough to reassure

either Biden fans, the remaining few that there are, or Americans who are worried about the

economy, is it?

No, it's not.

It is on the face of it, good news and bad news, depending on who you speak to.

So inflation on the month

fell from 8.5% to 8.3%. If you're an optimist, you say, look, the forecasts, many forecasts were

suggesting inflation was going to peak around springtime. Perhaps it has now peaked, and that

means we might not be facing double-digit inflation figures,

and if we're now on a trajectory downwards, and that's a big if, that's overall good news.

But the markets immediately responded in quite a flurry. They weren't delighted with the news,

and I think that's because people were actually expecting it to fall more than it did, if it was going to fall.

The major reason for

...