Former President Donald Trump accused Vice President Kamala Harris of pushing “Soviet style” economic policies after she announced her intention to introduce price controls on groceries.
The Harris campaign announced on Wednesday that she would institute a “federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries” as president in an attempt to stop “big corporations” from taking advantage of consumers.
“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday.
Former President Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana. The Republican presidential nominee accused Vice President Kamala Harris in a Truth Social post of pushing “Soviet style” policies to artificially control inflation. (AP/Rick Bowmer)
The former president continued, “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!!!”
Harris floated the idea of price controls earlier this week, stating 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.”
The announcement widespread criticism from commentators and economists who compared the idea to failed communist economies across the world.
A Harvard economist who worked in President Obama’s administration ripped Harris’ plan to curb inflation as not based in “reality.”
The Harris-Walz campaign is championing a bill that would combat alleged “price gouging” on groceries via price controls. Economics and media commentators have compared the policy to similar initiatives in communist nations such as the Soviet Union and Venezuela. (iStock)
“This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Jason Furman, the former National Economic Council chair under Obama, told The New York Times in a report published Friday. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell criticized Vice President Harris’ proposal to implement federal price controls in order to stop “price gouging” on groceries.
“It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is,” Rampell wrote in an op-ed published on Thursday. “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, who is also an economic commentator for CNN, compared the proposed controls to policies in the Soviet Union and other community countries.
Vice President Kamala Harris holds a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Democratic presidential nominee said in a statement that Americans can see the difference “between fair pricing in competitive markets and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business.” (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
“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,” she said.
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“And beyond that, the specific way this bill is written might actually increase prices because of some of the other language in it, things like requiring companies — public companies to disclose in their quarterly reports, their quarterly earnings reports, how they’re setting prices, which is a great way to help them collude, which normally we don’t want them to do,” she explained.
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark and Kristine Parks contributed to this report.