The Item sat down on Friday with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren to get her perspective on the U.S. response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the economy, and 2022 midterm elections. Here are her responses.
On why Biden has done a good job responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
“I give Joe Biden a lot of credit. The No. 1 move has been not to get too far ahead of our allies. He hasn’t always had the loudest voice and that’s important — to let other countries take the lead.
For the first time in history we’re really putting a lot of chips on the impact of an economic response and the only way that economic response has real force is if it’s many countries working in concert.”
Her outlook on U.S. economic recovery:
“The big corporations hear all the conversation around inflation and say this is a chance to not only pass along increased costs to consumers but also to take an extra spoonful of profits because they can hide it under the overall effect of inflation.
I asked Fed (Federal Reserve of the U.S.) Chairman (Jerome) Powell about these big corporations in very concentrated industries increasing their profit margins — not just increasing their costs — I get the increase in costs to pass along the increases in the cost of production. But that shouldn’t result in an increase in profit margins. Increases in profit margins are largely about price gouging.
I asked the Chair about it and he said they are increasing prices because they can. That’s what happens in highly concentrated industries and it’s bad for the American consumer.”
How she views the 2022 elections:
“The midterms will depend in large part on what the Democrats do over the next 200 days. The Republicans are hoping they can fight the entire election over their version of wokeism and of the militant Left. Democrats shouldn’t take that bait. We need to do what we were elected to do: Help working families. People are struggling with high costs. We need to be fighting to make the investments that help bring down costs for families across Massachusetts and across the country. We do that, then we’ll do fine in the midterms. If we fail to do that, then we’re in real trouble.”
