People Think Joe Biden Is To Blame For The Death Of 'Dollar' Stores
Can we really blame the president for this?
Lester Balajadia / Shutterstock Buckle up because we’re getting ready to talk about the economy, inflation, capitalism, President Joe Biden, and Dollar Tree’s decision to increase the price of their products from $1 to $1.25.
While many people truly believe that Biden is to blame for the “death” of the “dollar” store, the real answer is a lot more complicated than placing the blame on the most powerful government official in America.
Is President Joe Biden to blame for the inflation that sent the Dollar Tree’s price up?
Although posed as one question, the issue actually falls into two different questions — one of which is a prerequisite for the following question.
Why did Dollar Tree raise its prices? And if the answer is because of inflation, is President Biden to blame for that inflation?
On November 23, 2021, Dollar Tree Incorporated published its third-quarter earnings, which ended Oct. 30, and showed a 3.9% increase in net sales as well as an announcement for the new $1.25 price point.
“For 35 years, Dollar Tree has managed through inflationary periods to maintain the everything-for-one-dollar philosophy that distinguished Dollar Tree and made it one of the most successful retail concepts for three decades,” they said in their statement.
“However, as detailed in its September announcement,” they continued, “the Company believes this is the appropriate time to shift away from the constraints of the $1.00 price point in order to continue offering extreme value to customers.”
While Dollar Tree mentions inflation troubles, it seems that their primary reasoning behind the price increase is to “continue offering extreme value to customers."
They cite increasing costs of merchandise, distribution, and wage increases, as well as their desire to continue increasing their inventory to give customers more options and even bring back old “fan-favorites.”
But all this feels like an excuse.
Dollar Tree has largely beat out their expected earnings for all their fiscal quarters even before the pandemic began and has seen almost a 100% increase in the value of their stock since March 2020.
Despite all these numbers and the likely money-grab opportunity that the Dollar Tree is holding onto, if it was because of inflation, is it President Biden’s fault?
Inflation is a very complicated concept with a very simple outcome.
There are many different factors that coincide with inflation, but all of them produce the same result — an increase in the prices of products.
All of these different factors have been affected by the pandemic, so if there’s anyone that’s truly at fault here, it’s the coronavirus.
Perhaps the largest influences on the current inflation rate increase are the supply chain halt and the national debt crisis — and only one of these things directly affects Dollar Tree as well (hint: it’s the supply chain halt).
Because of the pandemic, the supply chain and distribution efforts are seeing a massive problem right now, which is also partly affected by the national debt, which we’ll get back to in a second.
The pandemic, and thus, the lockdown, has seen unemployment rates fly to heights never before seen since the Great Depression.
As such, ports and supply chain management saw a large decrease in available workers — which was fine because everyone was inside and worried about economic depression and feared losing money.
When former President Donald Trump signed the Pandemic Relief Bill, however, unemployment rates gradually decreased while consumer spending increased exponentially.
The pandemic relief package was supposed to aid in jumpstarting the economy again, and it succeeded in a lot of ways, further aided by the vaccination efforts that began earlier this year.
When President Biden took office, he continued a lot of the previous efforts led by the former president, and the economy took hold again while employment rates have lowered — but it wasn’t enough.
The supply chain couldn’t keep up with the demand, and as such there have been massive pile-ups in ports which cause an increase in the price of distribution. It also means that stores get their products more slowly which hurts their profits, causing even more increases in prices.
This is where the national debt comes in, a problem much larger than any one president.
When the government signs and implements these spending bills, the national debt increases, and when the national debt increases, the dollar’s value goes down, which means that prices generally increase to keep up with profit margins.
So while the economy was jump-started and has largely recovered from the pandemic’s initial hit, the effects of that jumpstart are being seen now as the government continues to spend.
No, it is not Biden’s fault, at least not directly.
It’s the culmination of a national debt much larger than Biden, pandemic relief spending that started before he took office, and corporate greed from Dollar Tree executives who fear not making as much as they were before despite consistently exceeding their own expectations.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.