In a capitalist system how much power does a president have over prices? I hear capitalist speak of free markets. If the market is free then the government has no control. Obviously we do not have a free market but more a freeish market. Gas is nearly $5 in my neck of the woods. In a freeish market how much of the price can we blame on a sitting president and how much blame does the oil industry deserve? How about food prices? Looking for objective answers from those that have actually taken the time to educate themselves on macroeconomics. I am part way through reading my first book on American economics so consider me a noob. What I suspect is that the power and influence a president has on the economy is not as much as the average citizen thinks they have.
Generally it is limited. The POTUS can use authorities in treaties and trade deals to curb imports but that usually gets responded to harshly as we saw with Trump and China. The POTUS can sign legislation that increases spending and therefore economic velocity, but its short-term measurable effect is usually nominal. The POTUS can release oil out of the strategic reserves to try to bring down gas prices (assuming there is any in it) but at most that is a blip economically. We have a capacity of about 700M barrels in the Strategic reserves, and right now we have about half of that available to be released at most. Biden has been draining it down regularly without replenishing much of it. In this regard, Trump actually did tell the truth sort of. We weren't maxed out but he had us up over 600M barrels when he was in office.
