Supply Chain Bottlenecks Cause Price Surges During Holiday Season, US Inflation Becomes Uncontrolled Focus

By the fourth quarter of 2021, the primary characteristic of the U.S. economy had shifted from pandemic recovery to full-blown inflation. Due to recurring global outbreaks, port congestion, and truck driver shortages, goods traveling from Asia to the U.S. faced severe supply chain bottlenecks. During the year-end holiday shopping season, this bottleneck led to tight supplies and continually accelerating prices for everything from toys to cars. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that the inflation rate kept setting new four-decade highs.

Faced with this reality, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was forced to publicly admit in December that the previous assessment of inflation being "transitory" was incorrect, and announced the acceleration of asset purchase tapering. For conservatives, this out-of-control inflation was the direct result of the Biden administration's trillion-dollar fiscal spending and the Fed's slow action, acting as a hidden tax that severely damaged the purchasing power of ordinary Americans.