Doesn’t matter.
If you thought that cracking down on price gouging was a central part of Kamala Harris’ economic program – because she said so in her economic speech a few weeks ago – then you were clearly mistaken.
Harris just wanted to let people know how seriously she takes rising grocery prices.
This was merely a small, even insignificant, proposal to copy the small-scale anti-price gouging laws at the federal level.
Regardless, we all know that Congress will never get enough votes to pass the bill.
In short, there is nothing to see here. Can’t we feel “joy” again? Insert a funny and clickable coconut meme here.
That’s essentially what Democratic insiders have said about a Harris policy proposal that has received the most attention during her months-long campaign.
As Politico put it: “Under pressure to defend Kamala Harris’s grocery price-gouging plan, some Democratic lawmakers are sending a quiet message to their worried allies: Don’t worry about the details. The plan will never pass Congress.”
The Washington Post points out that Harris’ allies “argue both publicly and privately that her plans have been taken out of context.”
The fact that Harris has revised many of her statements from her ill-fated primary campaign and its aftermath suggests that she was not particularly good at politics in 2019 and 2020.
The reversal of price gouging suggests that it will not be particularly good at it in 2024 either.
In her speech, Harris said: “So, believe me, as president, I will take action against the perpetrators. And I will work to enforce, for the first time, a federal ban on food price gouging. My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules.”
Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? The “believe me” is a particularly nice gesture, considering that her followers would essentially be saying that she should not be believed.
The premise of the proposal was always ridiculous.
The idea that food companies and grocery stores suddenly started ripping off consumers just as supply chain disruptions, excessive government spending, low interest rates and international unrest triggered inflation of historic proportions never made sense.
If they had such market power, they would probably have exercised it in the decades before the enormous rise in inflation under Joe Biden.
Equally absurd was the assumption that the government could make this nonexistent problem illegal.
If the Federal Trade Commission, the potential tool for ending alleged price gouging, can magically end inflation, why didn’t the Biden administration use it for that purpose when prices were rising rapidly?
It goes without saying that no one should trust the FTC to know what the price of eggs or paper towels should be.
The minimalist interpretation of Harris’ proposal is that, in the words of the Washington Post, “a targeted expansion of existing government powers, rather than new government ‘price controls,’ would transform the American economy.”
These state laws are designed to prevent exploitative pricing during disasters. It’s not clear why the federal government itself needs a law prohibiting people from charging exorbitant prices for bottled water after hurricanes, for example, or how such a law is supposed to prevent inflation throughout the economy.
This addition and explanation would not be necessary if Harris had not spoken so broadly about a new power of the federal government to control prices.
And she did not do this spontaneously, but read from a script that her supervisors had prepared, who had probably given it some thought.
What we are being told now was a way to convince people how much Harris cares about fighting inflation really shows how few What she says and suggests is important to her.
Their allies put forward an ultimately devastating defense: Don’t worry about her, she’s just trying to say things that sound good.
Twitter: @RichLowry
