Your Independence Day cookout will cost 17% more this year

Last year, the President Biden celebrated and took credit for the fact that your Independence Day cookout would cost, on average, 16 cents less than it did in 2020:

Since then the Consumer Price Index has risen by 8.6 percent (the year from May 2021 to May 2022), “…the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981.” Your cookout will, on average, cost more this year than it did last year.

How much more? On Monday, the Farm Bureau announced that:

U.S. consumers will pay $69.68 for their favorite Independence Day cookout foods, including cheeseburgers, pork chops, chicken breasts, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream, based on a new American Farm Bureau Federation marketbasket survey.

The average cost of a summer cookout for 10 people is $69.68, which breaks down to less than $7 per person. The overall cost for the cookout is up 17% or about $10 from last year…

The Farm Bureau blames “ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflation and the war in Ukraine.” Those supply chain disruptions are a result of the shutting down of large sections of the economy in response to COVID-19. Prices for a rage of foods was surging before Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. And it makes no sense to blame ‘inflation’ for higher prices when inflation is higher prices.

To be sure, a good deal of this is beyond the Biden administration’s immediate control. But then again, if you take the credit when inflation is low you run the risk of people blaming you when it gets high.