President Biden suffered yet another embarrassment when his Treasury Secretary, Jannet Yellen, appeared on CNBC and spoke about the state of the American economy, including inflation. Particularly, she was asked about the cause of inflation, whether it is because of “corporate greed,” as Biden claims, or something else. She admitted that something else lies at the root.

President Biden, as background, has, when not blaming inflation on “Putin’s price hikes,” blamed inflation on “corporate greed.” In a recent statement about the economy, for example, he said, “I will keep fighting to lower costs for families like the ones I grew up with in Scranton. I’m fighting corporate greed by calling on corporations with record profits to lower prices—as Target and Walmart have for grocery prices. I’m fighting to make rent more affordable by building 2 million new homes. I’m fighting to lower the cost of health care and prescription drugs, like insulin and inhalers.”

Similarly, in his 2024 State of the Union Address, President Biden insisted that corporations raising prices is the problem, saying, “Too many corporations raise their prices to pad their profits charging you more and more for less and less. That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations that engage in price gouging or deceptive pricing from food to health care to housing. In fact, snack companies think you won’t notice when they charge you just as much for the same size bag but with fewer chips in it. Pass Senator Bob Casey’s bill to put a stop to shrinkflation!”

Similarly, speaking to CNN, Biden said, making that same claim about snack food, “If you take a look at what people have, they have the money to spend. It angers them and angers me that you have to spend more. It’s like 20% less for the same price. That’s corporate greed. That’s corporate greed. And we have got to deal with it. And that’s what I’m working on.”

In any case, Treasury Secretary Jannet Yellen was asked about the “corporate greed” claim during an appearance on CNBC. Host Andrew Sorkin asked her, “Can I ask you another question about inflation, which is the administration and the President himself has talked a lot about what he sees as corporate greed, that the price of things has gone up almost artificially and the companies are taking advantage of customers. I asked you this question about two years ago, and at the time you said, no, no, I think it’s actually more about supply and demand that’s leading to this. Do you have a change in perspective?”

She said, “Well, I’m going to say exactly the same thing. I think that inflation is about supply and demand and clearly a significant part of the inflation we had to burst after the pandemic, during the pandemic reflected supply constraints and stresses on supply chains. And also, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a leap in energy prices and impacted food prices globally. That said, there are many sectors of the economy where competition is limited and price cost margins are high. And it is you could call that corporate greed. There are high markups. The level of markups is high.”

Pressing her, Sorkin asked, “Your boss calls it corporate greed. You don’t?” She told him, “Well, you know, there’s a lack of competition that enables firms to have healthy markups and profits. And our antitrust policy, which has been very active during this administration, is designed to make sure that we have effective competition in markets to hold down prices and offset that.

The RNC Research X account, which is run by the Republican National Committee, drew attention to the awkward interaction in a post on X. In that post about Yellen and Biden’s conflicting inflation remarks, the account said, “AWKWARD! Not even Biden’s own treasury secretary agrees that “corporate greed” is responsible for the economic woes under Biden.”

Watch that here:

In making his inflation claims, Biden was echoing the same general claim as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who claimed, “Right now prices are up at the pump, at the supermarket, and online. At the same time, energy companies, grocery companies, and online retailers are reporting record profits. That’s not simply a pandemic issue. It’s not simply some inevitable economic force of nature. It’s greed—and in some cases, it is flatly illegal.”