President Biden will target landlords he claims are keeping rents artificially high, during a speech Tuesday in the battleground state of Nevada.
Biden's attack on what he calls 'rent gouging' is part of his broader, election year effort to shift the blame for stubbornly high costs of living away from the president and his economic policies, and onto corporations with outsized pricing powers., a key measure of inflation, found that energy and shelter costs were the primary drivers of February's 0.4% climb in consumer prices.
"The recent settlement by the National Association of Realtors is a major step in increasing competition," in the housing market, said National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard on the Monday call with reporters.It is all part of Biden's broader battle on conglomerates and corporations that he views as overly powerful, and companies that he believes have deployed anticompetitive practices to distort the free markets.