Klain: A Price Gouging Law Like Harris’ Proposal ‘Was Not Going to Solve Inflation’

On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” former Biden White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain acknowledged that having a federal price gouging law, like the one proposed by 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris “was not going to solve inflation.”

Klain said, “Well, 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.”

Co-host Joe Kernen then cut in to ask, “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. 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 that the worst approach would be 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump’s tariffs and that state price gouging statutes haven’t destroyed the economy and “having a federal price gouging statute as a backstop is just a sensible measure.”

Klain continued, “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. 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.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett