Kamala Harris to propose ban on ‘price gouging’ for food, groceries

8/15/24; updated 8/16/24
 
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from The Washington Post,
8/15/24; updated 8/16/24:

The vice president endorses government action on housing, groceries, medical debt, drugs and other issues including a $6,000 credit for newborns.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday will unveil a proposed ban on “price gouging” in the grocery and food industries, embracing a strikingly populist proposal in her most significant economic policy announcement since becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee.

In a statement released late Wednesday night, the Harris campaign said that if elected, she would push for the “first-ever federal ban” on food price hikes, with sweeping new powers for federal authorities. Harris on Friday will also announce plans to lower prescription drug and housing costs, the campaign said.

Harris’s plans amount to a sharp escalation in the economic populism even of President Joe Biden, who had already pulled the party to the left on economic policy compared with his Democratic predecessors. While offering some overtures to the business elite, Harris is attempting to respond to intense voter frustration over rising prices — particularly grocery prices — with a far-reaching proposal.

Harris’s plan will include “the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries,” the campaign said in a statement.

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