Executives in the food industry challenged Vice President Kamala Harris' claim that they are to blame for the soaring cost of groceries, calling her government price control plan "a solution in search of a problem."
Harris, who is the Democrat nominee for president, accused food companies of "price gouging" and said that price controls were needed to bring down Americans' grocery bills and check corporate greed.
Food executives told The Wall Street Journal that high inflation has driven up labor and raw materials costs and spurred price increases. They also said that healthy profit margins are needed to finance the development of new products.
"We understand why there is this sticker shock and why it's upsetting," Andy Harig, a vice president at FMI, a food retailer and supplier trade group, said. "But to automatically just say there's got to be something nefarious, I think to us that is oversimplified."
During the Biden-Harris administration, inflation has raised overall costs by about 19%, with food prices going up 21% under Democrat control of the executive branch.
If she were to be elected president, Harris said she would ban price gouging by grocery stores and food suppliers by authorizing the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to penalize companies that violate the policy.
Republican rival and former President Donald Trump slammed Harris' "Communist price control" policy, saying the proposal would create "rationing, hunger, [and] dramatically more inflation."
The National Grocers Association told the Journal that Harris' plan to ban food price gouging "is a solution in search of a problem."
In a Friday opinion piece, The Washington Post editorial board knocked Harris' proposal, calling it a "populist gimmick" when the nation is in need of "serious economic ideas."
"Vice President Kamala Harris's speech Friday was an opportunity to get specific with voters about how a Harris presidency would manage an economy that many feel is not working well for them," the board wrote. "Unfortunately, instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks. Americans are clearly still anxious and angry about the high cost of groceries, housing and even $5.29 Big Macs.
"While the inflation rate has cooled substantially since the 2022 peak, an ostensible Biden-Harris administration accomplishment, prices remain elevated relative to the Trump years," the board said. "So it's a real political issue for Ms. Harris. One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve's policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it. The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business. She vowed to go after 'price gouging' by grocery stores, landlords, pharmaceutical companies and other supposed corporate perpetrators by having the Federal Trade Commission enforce a vaguely defined 'federal ban on price gouging.'
"Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting," it continued. "Ms. Harris says she'll target companies that make 'excessive' profits, whatever that means. (It's hard to see how groceries, a notoriously low-margin business, would qualify.) Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon's failed price controls from the 1970s. Whether the Harris proposal wins over voters remains to be seen, but if sound economic analysis still matters, it won't."