By CASEY HARPER | THE CENTER SQUARE
Vice President and likely Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is coming under fire for her new ban on “price gouging,” which critics say is little more than communist-style “price control” in which the government heavily regulates industry.
Harris’ efforts to combat rising consumer prices hit a major sore spot for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to solve that problem will be the subject of scrutiny after she unveils her plan at a rally in North Carolina on Friday. Harris unveiled a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on how she will specifically address inflation. Since she and President Joe Biden took office, prices have risen more than 20% overall.
Harris’ campaign this week touted a “nationwide ban on corporate price gouging” to help Americans facing high food prices and prevent “excessive” profits. Harris’ campaign said she would also direct the Justice Department to review mergers between grocers and food producers.
Critics of the plan immediately labeled it “price controls” and anti-capitalism, pointing out that similar ideas have failed in other countries. They also argue that Harris is blaming businesses for high prices, when the real blame lies with inflation fueled by government spending.
“Price controls may sound good to some, but they don’t work,” wrote U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on X, formerly Twitter. “They lead to supply shortages and ultimately higher prices. It looks like Kamala Harris is a communist at heart.”
Price gouging is already illegal, but the Biden-Harris administration argues that companies have taken advantage of increased inflation to raise their prices even further.
“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris, a person who has never built a business, understands nothing about profit and loss, has never run payroll and has never competed in a consumer market, will propose federal price controls,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a statement. “This should terrify every American. She claims Congress must ban ‘price gouging,’ which is already largely illegal and is not the cause of high prices. The skyrocketing prices caused by the Biden-Harris administration are not price gouging, they are inflation.”
Price controls are a feature of communist command-and-control economies, which is why Harris will likely avoid the term if her plan includes price controls at all, and why there has been such a strong backlash against the plan this week.
(Harris’) solution to the Harris price hikes she caused is a strong state on steroids – where Washington bureaucrats stick their hands into American companies and tell them what price they can and can’t sell a product at,” Scott said. “That never works because it causes companies to produce a lot less of something – which destroys supply and creates mass shortages of goods.”
Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary and is considered a possible Cabinet nominee if former President Donald Trump is elected, called on Republicans to speak out on the issue, asking whether they had “the backbone” to criticize Harris’ plan.
“The GOP has a completely wide open opportunity to re-embrace capitalism,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “No, that doesn’t mean blindly reciting neoliberal slogans about spreading ‘democracy through capitalism’ abroad (that doesn’t work, see China). But it *actually* means embracing exceptionalism and meritocracy over protectionism and clientelism here at home. That’s the fork in the road for our own movement.”
Polls show that inflation remains a top concern for voters and small business owners. Inflation has slowed from its rapid pace at the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, but some goods and services have continued to rise in price.
As The Center Square previously reported, roasted coffee prices rose 9.1% and dairy prices rose 9.4% over the past two months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pork and “processed pullets” saw slightly larger price increases.
Harris’ political agenda has been rather sparse so far. She has tried to distance herself from her previous activities in border policy and her time as a prosecutor. Therefore, this new political agenda is crucial to her election campaign.
