Longtime political strategist and former Biden White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain dismissed Vice President Harris’ price-fixing proposal during a recent appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” After weeks of withholding specific policy details, Harris revealed a plan allowing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general to impose substantial fines on grocers and suppliers deemed to be setting excessively high prices. The Biden-Harris Administration has consistently attributed the nation’s inflation issues to “corporate price gouging.”
Harris’ plan has been likened to the policies of communist planned economies, such as those in Venezuela and the former Soviet Union, and has faced criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, including from Klain. “Inflation came from a lot of places. And I think having a federal price gouging law was not going to solve inflation. But consumers deserve not to be gouged. That’s just fair,” he said.
“But where’s the evidence of gouging, Ron? When supply goes down, demand goes up — we’ve seen this movie before. I was around for Nixon’s price controls,” co-host Joe Kernen pushed back. “It’s the worst thing you can do. If you artificially control a price and keep it low, then competitors don’t come in to increase the supply and it just exacerbates the situation.”
Klain responded by claiming that former President Trump’s economic plans would be worse for the country despite the fact that the economy grew rapidly during his term and most Americans believe he’d do a better job than Harris. “But I agree, I think what we really need to do is to further smooth out supply chains…fix the supply chain problems we did in the Biden-Harris administration with improving the efficiency of our western ports to make them operate more efficiently and get goods into our country more quickly and avoid things like the freight rail strike that President Biden prevented,” he said. “And so, I think you’re going to see an administration devoted to bringing down costs and also putting a little more money in middle-class families’ pockets.”
Add a former official who worked in then-President Barack Obama’s administration to the list of experts on the right and left who are railing against Harris’ newly unveiled economic plan. “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Harvard economist Jason Furman told The New York Times in a report published earlier this month. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”
On Wednesday, Harris revealed part of her policy platform after weeks of speculation. The plan proposed price controls on grocery chains and their suppliers to combat “corporate price gouging.” [she called it “price gauging] The Biden-Harris Administration has frequently attributed America’s inflation issues to “corporate price gouging,” a concern that has consistently ranked high among American voters.
Under Harris’ plan, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general would be allowed impose steep penalties on companies if their prices are deemed to be too high. “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 in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
Furman, who was the National Economic Council chair under Obama, is not alone in opposing Harris’ proposals; other prominent left-wing voices have also voiced criticism. In an editorial published in the Washington Post, columnist Catherine Rampell framed Harris’ plans as a disaster waiting to happen.
“It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is,” Rampell wrote in an op-ed published on Thursday. “It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.”
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.