WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries in a speech laying out her economic agenda Friday, campaign officials said late Wednesday, in an effort to blame big companies for persistently high costs of American consumer staples.
The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.
It also follows through on what people familiar with Harris’ forthcoming economic agenda said this week would be a centerpiece of her plans: an aggressive rhetorical attempt to shift the blame for high inflation onto corporate America. Polls show that argument resonates strongly with voters, including independent voters who could decide the November election.
Progressive groups have urged President Joe Biden, and now Harris, to fully embrace that argument.
In a release announcing the policy, Harris campaign officials did not detail how a price-gouging ban would be enforced or what current corporate behaviors would be outlawed if it were enacted. They said Harris would work in her first 100 days to put in place a federal ban “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 officials also said Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” on corporations that fix prices. They said that she would direct more resources toward investigating price-gouging in the supply chain for meat and that she would push federal officials to closely scrutinize proposed grocery mergers.
They also said that Harris would unveil plans Friday related to housing costs and prescription drug prices. Many states ban price gouging, but the federal government does not.
Inflation and prices are an obstacle for Harris as she faces off with former President Donald Trump this fall. Price growth soared in the first two years of Biden’s administration. It is falling toward historically normal levels now, though prices remain elevated from where they were three years ago. On Wednesday, the annual inflation rate dipped under 3% for the first time since 2021.
Economists largely blame a mix of factors for the price surge, including snarls in global supply chains related to the pandemic recession and economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve and Congress — including increased federal spending and tax cuts approved first by Trump, then Biden.
Over the past year, as grocery prices in particular have dragged on Biden’s approval rating, progressive groups urged him to blame something else for high prices: powerful corporations, whose profits soared during the pandemic. Biden has partly complied. He has gone after meatpacking companies and oil companies over high prices. He admonished companies regarding so-called shrinkflation — reducing the size of a product, like a bag of chips or a candy bar, while keeping the price the same or even raising it.
An analysis this year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that corporate consolidation had contributed to recent elevated grocery prices but that corporate factors did not come close to accounting for the majority of the price increases.
Harris appears to be going further. People familiar with her plans said this week that she would seek to connect her price-gouging plans to her political biography, including her record of prosecuting corporate lawbreakers. The Wednesday release confirmed that strategy.
“In her remarks Friday,” it concluded, “Vice President Harris will discuss her lifelong commitment to fighting for the middle class and tackling powerful interests by invoking her time as California’s attorney general and going after corporate greed and price gouging — and winning.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
