Posting on Truth Social on Friday, August 16, former President Donald Trump shredded Vice President Kamala Harris over what he characterized as a “Soviet style” price control proposal that Vice President Harris made on Friday when discussing how to fight inflation. Harris’s proposal, which she characterized as being meant to stop price-gouging, was widely panned.
As background, VP Harris said, proposing price controls on groceries, which have gone up dramatically in price, that “there’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business” — adding that “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
Speaking about the plan during a rally on Friday, Harris said, “I will go after the bad actors and I will work to pass the first ever federal ban on price gouging on food.” She continued, “My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead.”
Former President Trump, attacking the proposal, characterized it as being “SOVIET Style” and something that would make the price situation far, far worse than it currently is. He said, “If you think things are expensive now, they will get 100 times WORSE if Kamala gets four years as President. Under her plan, Kamala will implement SOVIET Style Price Controls.”
Continuing, he attacked her other plans, saying that she will turn all of America into California. He said, “She will abolish private health care, and make California’s ridiculous tax policies the law of the land, meaning EVERY American will be taxed up to 80% of their income! If you want more CASH and less TAX, VOTE TRUMP!!!”
Others panned the proposal as well. For example, Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade at the Cato Institute, told FOX Business, “Food prices are affected by a lot of things. The weather, geopolitics, the pandemic and all the supply chain issues and massive amounts of monetary and fiscal stimulus. And that caused prices to go haywire in a lot of industries.”
He added, “There’s really not a lot of evidence that there’s any sort of price gouging or profiteering or corporate greed.” He further noted, describing the state of things in the grocery and food supply industry, “When you actually look at the players in the market, they’re just simply not reaping windfall profits here.”
He further noted, “A policy like this is far easier explained by its politics than economics. We know that people, even though grocery prices have moderated, are still ticked when they go to the grocery store, and prices are much higher than they remember just a few years ago. And that is a potential liability for the Harris campaign.”
Watch Harris make the shocking proposal here:
Even Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell attacked the Kamala price control policy, saying, “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.”
Rampell further noted the communists have tried this sort of thing before and failed every time, writing, “We’ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before; Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, et cetera. It leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, you know, plenty of uncertainty.”
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