Trump slams Harris' call to ban price-gouging, but 37 states already do
Harris' plan wouldn’t amount to price controls but would police “excessive” hikes on essentials — a goal Trump and GOP states have pursued in different forms.
Former President Donald Trump has blasted his rival’s call for a federal ban on food price gouging as “communist” price controls. But experts say the proposal is a far cry from Soviet-style caps, and over three dozen states led by both parties already have versions of their own.
Laying out her economic agenda last week, Vice President Kamala Harris called to crack down on “excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business” by food and grocery sellers, including those in the wake of big mergers.
Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, responded: “After causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls.”
While some pundits and analysts have criticized Harris' idea as likely ineffective, comparing it to President Richard Nixon’s freezes on wages and prices in the early 1970s, others say there’s an important distinction.
“A price control is exactly what it sounds like — an agency setting an actual hard cap on a price,” Erin Witte, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit group, said in an email to NBC News. Economists generally agree that such caps can cause shortages, as limited profit potential leads companies to produce less of a good even if the lower price juices demand.
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