The only member of the House of Representatives who runs a family grocery store chain has issued a dire warning about the impact of Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to ban alleged price gouging, telling the Washington Post that it will “slowly turn us into a third world nation.”
“Standards of living are going to decline across the continental United States,” added new Rep. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio), who won a special election in June to represent part of eastern Ohio. Rulli is a third-generation member of the Youngstown-based Rulli Bros. Markets chain, which has been in business since 1917.
That background, an emotional Rulli told the Post this week, has given him unique insight into the economic problems facing many of his new voters.
“Our people are literally starving,” he said. “If you go to any grocery store, any grocery store in this country, you see people in the checkout line and you see how much they’re getting. They’re getting half of what they used to get, and it’s not even what they want.”
“They can’t get their favorite soap, they can’t get their favorite meat, they can’t get the healthy vegetables. They can’t get any of that. It’s the saddest thing in the world,” he added. “We have to change that.”
Sometimes, Rulli said, he even reached into his own pocket and paid the bill for some of his regular customers.
Nevertheless, the Republican insisted that any attempt to artificially depress prices would lead to ruin.
“Stores … will close in droves. And the second problem you’ll see is that the selection on the shelves will shrink dramatically. That will actually affect the quality of life,” Rulli added, predicting that the problem of food deserts will get worse and “it will feel like you’re in Havana, Cuba.”
“The first to go out of business will be the food deserts, the urban (people),” he said of Harris’ proposal. “The second to go out of business will definitely be the mid-sized grocery stores. And the third will be the larger ones.”
Harris has been tight-lipped about the details of her economic plan, which many see as an attempt to undermine former President Donald Trump’s lead in the polls on the issue.
While Republicans blame the Harris-Biden administration and Democrats in Congress for decades of high inflation for approving trillions in new government spending, Harris blames pandemic-related supply chain bottlenecks for rising prices, which she says have been kept artificially high by companies ever since.
“Price fluctuations are normal in free markets, but Vice President Harris recognizes that there is a big difference between fair prices and the inflated, cost-independent prices that Americans have experienced in the food and grocery industry,” the Harris campaign said in a press release earlier this month.
Defenders of the Harris plan point out that dozens of states already have price gouging bans in place, typically intended for emergencies such as extreme weather events.
Several Democratic senators have already introduced a federal law that prohibits price gouging. They give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general broad powers to take action against companies.
Critics are puzzling over what such a ban might look like in detail, and some are comparing it to government price controls, which economists say have led to massive supply shortages and other shocks in many countries around the world.
Rulli explained that profit margins at most grocery stores are rather low, due both to high operating costs and competition from larger competitors that can sell larger quantities of their products.
Last year, the Food Industry Association estimated that the average grocery store profit margin was about 1.6 percent.
“There is absolutely no money left in the grocery stores,” Rulli said.
The Ohio Republican wants to help struggling Americans by lowering fuel prices, which Rulli says are the main cause of the economic strain.
“I think the Biden administration has done so many terrible things to throttle our energy,” he said.
Annual inflation was 2.9% for the 12-month period to July, well below the peak of 9.1% in June 2022 and below 3% for the first time since March 2021.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted at an impending interest rate cut, saying on Friday that “the time has come for a policy adjustment” – but without saying when a possible cut might come.
