Vice President Kamala Harris will speak on Friday about her economic plan to ban price gouging in the grocery trade, drawing parallels to Republican President Richard Nixon’s price and wage freezes.
Harris is expected to provide further details on her plan to reduce grocery prices and everyday costs in a campaign speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday afternoon.
Her campaign team claims the proposal will curb corporate exploitation of consumers and will impose mandatory penalties, including having the Federal Trade Commission fine food companies that violate the ban.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday evening, Harris said: “When I’m president, my top priority will be to bring down prices. I will take action against big corporations that engage in illegal price gouging and corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents for working families.”
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Their economic policy proposal is based on the ideas of Republican President Nixon, who was initially against government intervention in the economy and later wanted to control wages and prices to combat inflation.
In an official statement in 1971, Nixon announced the “first peacetime wage and price freeze.” This move was widely viewed as unsuccessful several years later and had lasting effects on the economy.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett criticized Harris’ plan on Fox News yesterday, calling it a “bad idea.” He added: “It’s even bad for Republicans, as you said. Nixon did it, and it was a bad idea then.”
Capitalists who prefer a free market to government intervention generally oppose price controls because they impose legal limits on the prices of goods.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis wrote in 2022 that “(price) controls impose significant costs that increase with their duration and scope,” adding, “Prices allocate scarce resources. Price controls distort these signals, leading to inefficient allocation of goods and services.”
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Harris’ proposal drew criticism from prominent Republicans who called it “communist” and argued it would not help the economy.
Donald Trump’s campaign team said in a statement today that Venezuela’s controversial communist President Nicolás Maduro – whom the United States does not recognize as the official winner of July’s presidential election and under whose rule Venezuela has experienced an economic and humanitarian crisis that, according to the United Nations, has led to 7.7 million Venezuelans fleeing the country – was “proud of Comrade Kamala” and her proposal for price controls.
The email, with the subject line “Comrade Kamala Becomes a Communist,” continued: “It cannot be overstated how devastating the idea of letting bureaucrats in Washington dictate food prices in cities, suburbs, and rural communities across the country is – destroying necessary free-market supply and demand signals and ultimately leading to higher prices for consumers.”
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign team via email on Friday, requesting comment.
Trump’s campaign team and other Republican politicians and commentators said the current state of the economy is a result of President Joe Biden and Harris’ economic policies, writing: “Harris and Biden’s disastrous economic policies created the inflation problem – aided and abetted by Harris’s deciding votes on trillions in inflation-adjusted spending.”
