Harris to propose federal ban on ‘corporate price-gouging’ in food and groceries

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” her campaign announced late Wednesday.

“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.”

The proposed ban is part of a broader economic policy platform that the Democratic presidential nominee plans to unveil Friday at a campaign rally in battleground North Carolina.

Harris will also pledge that if elected president, she will direct her administration to increase scrutiny of potential mergers between large supermarkets and food producers, “specifically for the risk that the proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers,” her campaign said.

This package of regulatory proposals is one of the Harris campaign’s earliest efforts to outline an economic platform that is independent of President Joe Biden‘s agenda.

Before Biden abruptly dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris, he had spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and blaming corporate greed for consumer prices driven higher by inflation.

Harris’ plan still sits firmly within the overall Biden approach to regulation, however, which has prioritized consumer protections across a range of industries and sued to block several massive corporate mergers.

In March, the White House launched the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, a joint initiative between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

On Friday, Harris will single out the meat industry, saying that “soaring meat prices have accounted for a large part of Americans’ higher grocery bills, even as meat processing companies registered record-breaking profits following the pandemic,” according to the statement from her campaign.

The Democratic presidential nominee will also unveil proposals intended to bring down consumer costs in two other sectors where corporations have aggressively exercised their pricing powers: prescription drugs and housing.

Harris’ speech will come two days after her opponent, former President Donald Trump, gave his own economic policy speech in North Carolina, where he blamed Harris for the high price of consumer goods.

“You’re paying the price for [Harris’] liberal extremism at the gas pump, at the grocery counter, and on your mortgage bill,” Trump said in Asheville.

Nearly a month into her campaign, Harris has already erased Trump’s lead over Biden in national and swing state polls.

But Trump still maintains his longstanding advantage over Democrats when it comes to which candidate voters believe would be best for the economy.