Democratic strategist Laura Fink was visibly taken aback when Fox Business host Charles Payne made a direct comparison between her comments about inflation and comments made by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the same subject just two months earlier.
Fink joined Payne, who was guest-hosting “Your World” on Fox News for regular host Neil Cavuto, to discuss the economy and how President Joe Biden’s administration has been handling inflation leading up to his planned remarks Tuesday on the issue.
Payne began the segment by asking Fink directly whether she thought it was time for the Biden administration to tackle the inflation issue head-on.
“I think it’s been a concern for some time. We know that inflation is up. We also know that profit margins are up, with the biggest U.S. companies raking in the biggest profit margins since 2019,” Fink replied, pivoting almost immediately to suggest that profiteering and price-gouging could be at the root of some of the inflated prices Americans were paying.
“So the Biden administration you will see focused on where there are those — the lack of competition in the marketplace. Things like meat processing. That’s why the prices of poultry and beef and pork are up. It’s because there’s a bottleneck and a lack of competition with those processors,” Fink continued. “So really addressing that and making the American public aware that often it’s the companies that are raking in that dollar and they’re making money significantly above and beyond.”
“Is it pandemic profiteering? That’s the question the Biden administration will be asking corporate America and Americans,” Fink concluded.
“It sounds like a speech that the communist leader of China just gave two months ago against corporations over there,” Payne quipped as he moved to bring another panelist into the conversation, but Fink balked.
“Excuse me?” she exclaimed.
“Should we go to war with American businesses in this period? Should we be blaming them?” Payne asked, but Fink continued to object.
“Should we profiteer? Should we have competition?” she asked, but Payne pushed back. “I’m asking Nick,” he said.
“You just called me a communist!” Fink shot back, adding, ” I thought I would defend myself.”
Payne said that it had not been his intent to call Fink a communist, but repeated his statement that the Chinese president had given a similar assessment some two months earlier.
“But competition — Charles, I think we agree that competition’s important,” Fink concluded.
The Biden administration has responded to criticisms regarding inflation and skyrocketing gas prices by promising to look into whether or not major companies are engaging in price gouging. The president himself sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the administration had seen “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil and gas companies.”
“I do not accept hard-working Americans paying more for gas because of anti-competitive or otherwise potentially illegal conduct,” Biden wrote.
Biden is set to address the nation on Tuesday and will reportedly speak on inflation just days ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday — which is predicted to cost gathering families noticeably more than in years past.
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Source: Dailywire
