Obama Economist Jason Furman Rips Kamala Harris’s Socialist-Style Price Control Policy

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. 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.

At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might accidentally raise prices.

That’s because, among other things, the legislation would ban companies from offering lower prices to a big customer such as Costco than to Joe’s Corner Store, which means quantity discounts are in trouble. Worse, it would require public companies to publish detailed internal data about costs, margins, contracts and their future pricing strategies. Posting cost and pricing plans publicly is a fantastic way for companies to collude to keep prices higher — all facilitated by the government.

Prices under the Biden-Harris administration increased about 20 percent across the board. Grocery prices, for context, increased 26 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe the administration’s policies either hurt or had no impact on inflation, the number one issue among respondents, a Monmouth University poll found in June.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.