FACT CHECK: Economist Pours Cold Water on Kamala Harris’ Explanation for Inflation
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell /
Vice President Kamala Harris blamed price-gouging for high food prices, though experts say Biden administration policies are to blame for the high cost of living and for inflation.
“I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price-gouging on food,” Harris said Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina. “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.”
“We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting continued. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.”
But price-gouging is not the reason prices have gone up, according to EJ Antoni, a public finance economist at The Heritage Foundation.
“The prices that businesses are paying have gone up by the same percentage that our prices have,” Antoni told The Daily Signal. “So, all of the cost increases that businesses have faced, they’re simply just passing them on to consumers, and that’s why we’re all paying more.”
Harris highlighted grocery store price increases since 2020, shortly before the Biden administration took office.
“A lot a loaf bread cost 50% more today than it did before the [COVID-19] pandemic,” she said. “Ground beef is up almost 50%.”
The Biden administration is at fault for the increased prices, not food companies, Antoni said.
“The government spending, borrowing, and printing trillions of dollars that it didn’t have to finance it all, that’s what devalued the dollar,” Antoni said. “That’s what caused these tremendous shocks to interest rates that have so distorted the economy and caused so much havoc in supply chains and created all of these additional costs for businesses.”
The vice president promised, if elected, to lower prices by increasing competition in the food industry.
“We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” Harris said. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.”
Antoni wonders why Harris thinks she has to wait until her first day as president to address high prices, when she has been in office for three-and-a-half years.
Harris boasted economic improvement since the Biden administration took office in January 2021.
“We were facing one of the worst economic crises in modern history, and today, by virtually every measure, our economy is the strongest in the world,” the Democrat said.
The Biden administration did not solve an economic problem, Antoni said. They created a problem, and allowed it to run its course.
“Inflation is down—after they ran it up to 40-year highs,” Antoni said. “It still is more than twice what it was when they took office. The problem is not quite as bad as it was before, but it’s still bad.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.