Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to give the federal government broad powers to control food and grocery prices was roundly criticized Thursday by Republican lawmakers and economists, who called it “big government on steroids” and “economic madness.”
The 59-year-old Democratic presidential nominee’s economic platform calls for “the first federal ban on price gouging on food and household goods” within her first 100 days in office to “lower the cost of everyday items for Americans and combat inflation,” according to Harris’ campaign, which released details of the plan ahead of her official announcement on Friday.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is hoping to succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the top Senate Republican next year, argued that if the plan is aimed at fighting inflation, it completely misses the point.
“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris – someone who has never built a business, understood a profit and loss statement, run a payroll or compete in a consumer marketplace – will propose federal price controls. This should terrify every American.” He wrote to X.
Scott noted that price gouging “is already widely illegal and is not the cause of high prices.”
“The price hikes created by the Biden-Harris Administration are not gouging, they are inflation,” he added. “Her solution to the price hikes Harris has created is big government on steroids: Washington bureaucrats stepping into American companies and telling them what they can and can’t sell their products for.”
Jared Walczak, a research associate and vice president at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, noted that even as food prices have soared under Biden, companies that sell groceries have thin profit margins.
“When Kamala Harris points out price gouging by grocery stores, she’s blaming industry profit margins,” Walczak wrote on X, attaching a chart showing that grocery stores made a 1.2% profit margin last year, compared to an 8.5% industry profit margin.
Walczak told the Post that while there are several factors that drive up the price of goods, including inflation, tariffs, labor costs and supply chain disruptions, “government policies themselves are a big factor,” and that “trying to counter the effects of these policy choices by imposing penalties on price gouging will further distort markets and consumers will lose out again.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who believes “the federal government is solely responsible for rising prices,” rejected the vice president’s idea that increased government regulation would lower food prices.
“Rather than address the real problem (excessive spending and regulation) in a way that will curb inflation, Kamala Harris is trying to obscure the problem by imposing price controls, thereby making the problem worse.” He wrote to X.
“When the government puts a price cap on something, it reduces the incentive for people to produce (or who might think about producing) that product,” Lee argues. “As a result, products that are subject to price controls end up becoming more scarce because fewer people have an incentive to produce them.”
Samuel Gregg, the Friedrich Hayek Professor of Economics and Economic History at the American Institute of Economic Research, bluntly called the Harris plan “economic madness.”
“Price controls are a very bad idea” He wrote to X“They lead to shortages and serious misallocation of capital, and they distort pricing’s ability to inform the information we all need to make choices.”
“It didn’t work when Republicans (Nixon) tried it, and it won’t work under a Democrat administration, no matter how strong the ‘atmosphere’,” Gregg pointed out in another post. “They will only cause scarcity and misery.”
“Are there any fiscally responsible Democrats out there who will condemn this irresponsibility?”
The vice president’s comprehensive proposal would target “large corporations that exploit consumers to make excessive corporate profits on food and groceries,” according to part of a preview of the plan.
Harris would also authorize the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to “impose severe penalties” on companies that ignore the proposed order and provide “federal resources to identify price fixing and other anti-competitive conduct in the food and grocery industry.”
She plans to present the plan to voters at a rally in North Carolina on Friday.
