Critics blast Harris’ new price control plan

By Casey Harper
The Center Square

Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is taking fire for her new "price-gouging" ban that critics say is little more than communism-style "price controls" where government heavily regulates industries.

Harris’ effort to address elevated consumer prices hits at a key pain point for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to go about fixing that problem will be the subject of close scrutiny when she lays out the plan at a North Carolina rally Friday. Harris is expected to unveil a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on specifically how she will address inflation. Prices have risen more than 20% overall since she and President Joe Biden took office.

Harris’ campaign this week touted the “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” to help Americans with high grocery prices and prevent "excessive" profits. Harris' campaign said she would also order the Department of Justice to take a look at mergers between grocers and food producers.

Critics of the plan immediately blasted it as “price controls,” anti-capitalism and noted similar ideas failed in other countries. They also argue Harris is blaming corporations for high prices when inflation fueled by government spending is really to blame.

“Price controls might sound good to some, but they do not work,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They lead to supply shortages and in the end, higher prices. Looks like Kamala Harris is a communist at heart.”

Price gouging is currently already illegal, but the Biden-Harris administration has argued that corporations have taken advantage of elevated inflation to raise prices even higher.

“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris, a person who has never built a business, doesn’t understand profit and loss, has never met payrolls, and who has never competed in a consumer market, is going to propose federal price controls,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a statement. “That should terrify every American. She claims that Congress needs to ban ‘price gouging,’ which is already widely illegal and not the cause of high prices. The skyrocketing prices created by the Biden-Harris administration aren’t price-gouging, it’s inflation.”

Price controls are a feature of communistic “command and control” economies, the reason Harris will likely seek to avoid the term, if her plan will truly include price controls at all, and why such a strong reaction broke out against the plan this week.

“[Harris’] solution to the Harris Price Hikes she caused is big government on steroids – where Washington bureaucrats stick their hands into American businesses and say what they can and can’t sell a product for,” Scott said. “It never works because it causes companies to make much less of something – destroying supply and causing a mass shortage of goods.”

Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary and is considered a potential cabinet appointee if former President Donald Trump is elected, called out Republicans on the issue, asking whether they would have “the spine” to critique Harris’ plan.

“The GOP has a wide-open opportunity to embrace capitalism again,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “No, that doesn’t mean blindly reciting neoliberal shibboleths about spreading ‘democracy through capitalism’ abroad (that doesn’t work: see China). But it *does* mean embracing exceptionalism & merit over protectionism & patronage here at home. That’s the fork in the road ahead for our own movement.”

Polling shows that inflation remains a top concern for voters and small business owners. Inflation has slowed from its breakneck pace earlier in the Biden-Harris term, but some goods and services have continued to rise.

As The Center Square previously reported, roasted coffee prices rose 9.1% and dairy product prices increased 9.4% in the past two months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pork and “processed young chickens” prices saw slightly higher increases.

So far, Harris’ policy agenda has been sparse, and what record she does have on the border and her time as a prosecutor she has tried to distance herself from, making this new policy agenda crucial for her campaign.

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