But when the administration says “the president is committed to doing everything he can to bring prices down” and the president himself says tackling inflation is his “top national priority it is difficult to take them seriously. It is clear from news reports and from my own conversations with officials that fighting inflation is not, in fact, seen as a top priority.

The clearest example of this is the continued indecision about what to do about student loan debt. During the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government suspended student loan repayments. At the time, it was a useful economic stimulus, but it has been extended several times, and the United States is currently suffering from too much fiscal stimulus. The payment restart policy and the amount of debt to be canceled are complicated. But the economic analysis is simple – resuming payments fights inflation and outright forgiveness fuels it.

It’s on the demand side of the economy. The biggest problem is on the supply side.

In his State of the Union address last March, Biden observed that “one of the ways to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer.” He promised he had “a better plan to fight inflation: lower your costs, not your wages.” Make more cars and semiconductors in America, more infrastructure and innovation in America.

It was a big round of applause, but it reveals a deep ambiguity in Bidena thinking.

The most accurate version of what he says is that the United States needs ideas to increase its production capacity. For most of the past 20 years, America’s real gross domestic product has been below its potential GDP because it has suffered from a demand deficit. Now that the demand deficit has disappeared – which is a great political achievement – further growth will therefore have to come from increased potential. Investments in infrastructure should help achieve this goal.

But Biden’s words can also be read as a call for more protectionism.

This ambiguity is evident in the Commerce Department’s investigation into whether Chinese-made solar panels are being sold too cheaply in the United States. Application of anti-dumping rules could help stimulate domestic manufacturing of solar panels. But it would also increase costs for the domestic solar industry, stalling dozens of large-scale projects. More solar panels would be made in the United States, but they would produce less solar electricity and face higher prices.

At the Department of Transportation, meanwhile, the Federal Railroad Administration is trying to reimpose a rule that would require two-person crews to operate freight trains. It’s an idea that was enacted in the final days of President Barack Obama’s administration as a safety precaution, then canceled by Donald Trump’s administration.

Even under Obama, the safety benefits of this idea were questionable, as rising rail freight costs push products to trucks, which are inherently less safe. But at the time, this kind of giveaway to a unionized industry was seen as a useful job creation measure in an economy plagued by weak demand and an unstable labor market. Now the United States needs a new approach that emphasizes tedious technocratic concerns and efficiency.

The 800-pound gorilla in this regard revisits Trump-era tariff policy.

A reliable estimate is that canceling these tariffs could reduce inflation by 1.3 percentage points. While this is optimistic, there is no doubt about the direction of change: tariffs mechanically raise prices by taxing products.

The benefit is supposed to be that it protects jobs. But in an inflationary climate, protecting jobs is wrong. If the United States imports goods from abroad instead of manufacturing them domestically, it frees up Americans to manufacture even more stuff at home. But the Biden administration has generally taken the opposite view — extending Buy America’s longstanding procurement and contracting rules as if the country is currently desperate for job opportunities.

All of these issues and policies, to be clear, are being debated within the Biden administration. But not everyone seems to have understood that the fight against inflation is the top priority.

On some issues, perhaps this should not be the case. Biden’s efforts to help Ukraine gain independence were inflationary in many ways, but he decided it was a price to pay to achieve important foreign policy goals. Cutting Social Security or SNAP benefits would reduce inflation, but achieve these goals by making the poor and elderly poorer. Even a very inflation-averse public does not want inflation to be reduced by any means necessary.

Still, rising inflation is the biggest problem the country is currently facing – so it should serve as a trump card in most political disputes. The president should set out a small number of goals that he considers more important than fighting inflation, and then clearly communicate to his cabinet that, of everything else, fighting inflation is task #1. .

In many cases, the magnitude of the impact can be relatively modest. But overall, it will matter if the government resolves dozens of trade-offs between efficiency and other goals in favor of efficiency. On a wide range of issues – the Jones Act, ethanol blending rules, the interpretation of prevailing wage doctrines, even immigration policy – ​​the right decision is one that minimizes inflation.

The White House says it agrees with this proposal. He just needs to start acting.

More from Bloomberg Opinion:

• This is what life looks like with long-term high inflation: Allison Schrager

• How Biden can use inflation to his advantage: Karl W. Smith

• The longer inflation persists, the greater the disappointment: John Authers

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Editorial Board or of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Co-founder and former columnist of Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is the author, most recently, of “One Billion Americans”.

More stories like this are available at bloomberg.com/opinion