VP Harris releases economic plan that includes efforts to end price gouging

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to create a federal ban on food price gouging, and lower the costs of housing and medicine. It’s all part of an economic plan she’ll formally announce in North Carolina on Friday. 

The details on how she’ll accomplish these goals are less clear. 

For instance on food prices, the campaign stated Harris’ plan will include, “the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”

The campaign said she’ll give the Federal Trade Commission the ability to impose “harsh penalties” on firms that break the new rules. They didn’t lay out what the penalties or the new rules would be. 

Price gouging is illegal in 37 states plus DC, but there’s no federal statute. 

Economists have criticized government price controls and say it could discourage companies from making enough supplies. 

“This represents a return to the lazy, failed economic policies of the 1970s, when price controls proved to be a disaster for the economy,” Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Washington Post.  “It shows Harris is pandering for easy answers on the economy, even more aggressively than Biden had. Biden had talked about price gouging but was not this aggressive, seeking reforms to actually ban it.”

The Harris campaign admits her policies will be very similar to those of the Biden administration. 

One campaign staffer told The Guardian, “Same values, different vision.” 

“She’s not moving far away from him on substance, she will highlight the ones that matter most to her,” the staffer said. 

The campaign also said she wants to crack down on what she calls unfair mergers and acquisitions in the food industry. 

Harris needs to present a compelling economic plan to win over voters. According to Pew Research, 23% of Americans rate the country’s economy as excellent or good, 36% say it’s poor and 41% view conditions as “only fair.”