(Fox News) Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to roll out her economic plan Friday during a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. Early indications are it will have a progressive populist thrust, including attacks on corporate “price gouging,” which conservative critics say is a smokescreen to deflect from the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of inflation.
Michael Tyler, the Harris-Walz campaign communications director, said on CNN’s “Newsroom” Wednesday that Americans “can expect her to talk about the ways in which she wants to move this economy forward and lower costs for middle-class families,” noting Harris “understands that for too many families, prices remain too high.” Additionally, this week, the campaign insisted tackling inflation will be a “day one” priority.
However, conservatives are criticizing Harris for her “day one” claim about going after inflation, insisting she has had four years to do something about it.
“Day one in office was 3½ years ago. What have you been doing in the meantime to tackle inflation?” E.J. Antoni said. “You’ve been creating it.”
Similar remarks were echoed by former President Trump Wednesday during his own stop in North Carolina.
“I gave Harris and Biden an economic miracle, and they quickly turned it into an economic nightmare,” the former president said.
In advance of Harris’ first formal policy speech of her presidential campaign Friday, her team announced Harris plans to call for first-of-its-kind federal controls on food and grocery “price gouging” by corporations. The proposal would give authority to the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to impose harsh penalties on companies for setting excessively high prices.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, speaks at a campaign rally Aug. 10, in Las Vegas. (AP/Julia Nikhinson)
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said shortly after announcing the policy proposal.
Republican economists have criticized the move, calling it “Marxist” and “lunatic behavior.”
They also challenged the merits of Harris’ claim that food and grocery providers are artificially inflating prices.
“Actual consumer prices have been going up less than producer prices, which means that businesses, if anything, are price gouging themselves,” said Richard Stern, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.
“If the prices are going up more than the cost of doing business, then [the consumer price index] would be going up faster than [the producer price index], and it’s not.”
Antoni, also of the Heritage Foundation, noted that, in the past, when politicians have tried to impose price and wage controls, it has “always ended with the same disastrous effect, which is shortages.”
“We had gas lines in the 1970s, and now she’s talking not about regulating the price of fuel, but regulating the price of food. So, instead of gas lines, we’re going to have bread lines. This is absolutely insane, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised because, let’s face it, [Harris] is a Marxist, and her policies are going to introduce the exact same effects here that Marxist policies have had elsewhere.”
Can someone give us a lesson on what happens to an economy/country when the incentives to create and produce are destroyed?
The catch for the Left is that they will still expect food to be produced and shelves to be fully stocked after they destroy the industry. https://t.co/6t7mPp5JRc
— Ryan Walker (@ryanlwalker) August 15, 2024
