Kamala Harris’ plan to lower food prices is ripped to shreds by Republicans, economists: ‘Economic lunacy’
Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to grant the federal government expansive new authority to control food and grocery prices was roundly criticized Thursday by several Republicans and economists, who argued that it was “big government on steroids” and “economic lunacy.”
The 59-year-old Democratic presidential nominee’s economic agenda calls for the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries” to be implemented within her first 100 days as president in order to “bring down Americans’ grocery costs and keep inflation in check,” according to the Harris campaign, which released details of the plan ahead of Friday’s official unveiling.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who hopes to succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the top Republican in the upper chamber next year, argued that if the plan seeks to tackle inflation, it completely misses the mark.
“Tomorrow, VP 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. That should terrify every American,” he wrote on X.
Scott noted that price gouging “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,” he added. “Her 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.”
Jared Walczak, a researcher and vice president at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, pointed out the slim profit margins companies selling groceries are making even as prices on food skyrocketed under President Biden.
“When Kamala Harris cites price gouging by grocers, these are the industry profit margins she’s railing against,” Walczak wrote on X, including a graph showing the 1.2% profit margins grocers made last year compared to 8.5% profit margins across all industries.
Walczak told The Post that while there are several factors driving up the costs of goods, including inflation, tariffs, labor costs and supply chain disruptions, “government policies are themselves a substantial driver” and that “attempting to combat the effects of these policy choices with penalties for high prices will only distort markets further, and consumers will once again be the losers.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who believes the “federal government is entirely responsible for higher prices,” dismissed the vice president’s belief that more government regulations will bring the cost of groceries down.
“Rather than address the actual problem (excessive spending and regulation) in a way that would keep inflation in check, Kamala Harris plans to paper over the problem — and thereby make it worse — by instituting price controls,” he wrote on X.
“When government caps the price of anything, it reduces the incentives of those who produce (or might decide to produce) that thing,” Lee argued. “Consequently, any product subject to price controls will ultimately become more scarce — because fewer people will be incentivized to produce it.”
Samuel Gregg, the Friedrich Hayek chair in economics and economic history at the American Institute for Economic Research, bluntly referred to the Harris plan as “economic lunacy.”
“Price controls are a SERIOUSLY bad idea,” he wrote on X. “They lead to shortages, severe misallocations of capital, and distort the ability to prices to signal the information we all need to make choices.”
‘They didn’t work when tried by a Republican (Nixon) and they won’t work under a Democrat, however strong the ‘vibes,’” Gregg noted in a separate post. “They only cause shortages and misery.”
“Will no fiscally responsible Democrat call out this irresponsibility?”
The vice president’s sweeping proposal would target “big corporations” that “unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries,” the plan preview reads in part.
Harris would also authorize the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to “impose harsh penalties” on companies that flout the proposed order and provide “resources for the federal government to identity price-fixing and other anti-competitive practices in the food and grocery industries.”
She will present the plan to voters during a rally in North Carolina on Friday.
