AChinese government official belittled the Biden administration for failing to tame America's stubbornly high inflation while U.S. arms companies have raked in profits from Russia's war on Ukraine.
Hua Chunying, China's assistant minister of foreign affairs, on Wednesday scoffed at U.S. officials in a tweet. Her taunt followed part of a back-and-forth between the two countries as China seeks to balance its alliance with Russia with blowback from its roundly condemned invasion of Ukraine.
"While top #US arms manufacturers boasted of the conflicts in #Ukraine as a boon for business, American people are suffering from soaring prices and higher inflation," Hua, who serves as the ministry's spokesperson, said in a Tweet.
Hua's tweet included a chart showing how America's inflation rate rose to 7.5 percent in 2022, the fastest annual rise in the price of consumer goods on record since February 1982.
The high inflation rate has been a looming political liability for President Joe Biden who earlier in his presidency said the rise in prices for consumer goods would plateau as the economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released earlier this week found that almost three-quarters of Americans are displeased with Biden's management of inflation, as the economy has eclipsed the pandemic as the country's most-pressing issue.