Kamala Harris targets grocery stores: Vows to fight price gouging

US Vice President Kamala Harris, who has seen a sudden surge in her poll numbers since taking over the nomination and is rapidly closing the gap with Republican candidate Donald Trump, is focusing on grocery costs—one of the biggest issues for American society—in the neck-and-neck race.

According to a report by Yunus Paksoy from Hürriyet newspaper, despite annual inflation in the US falling to 2.9 percent as of August, grocery costs for American families have risen significantly during the time Harris has been in office with US President Joe Biden compared to the Trump era. Compared to 4 years ago, egg prices have increased by over 50 percent, milk prices by over 35 percent, and butter prices by over 30 percent.

According to the ABC News-Washington Post-Ipsos poll released a few weeks ago, the economy and the cost of living are the most important agenda items for voters. 89 percent of voters state that economic policies will determine their votes. The second piece of bad news for Harris is that the public trusts Trump more to solve economic problems. Under these expectations, Harris introduced her economic policy, acknowledging that food inflation is still very high while blaming chain grocery stores.

PLAN EXISTS, BUT NO DETAILS

Acknowledging that grocery costs rose due to supply chain disruptions and increased production costs during the pandemic, the Democratic candidate complains that prices are still not being lowered even though these reasons are in the past. Stating that "some large supermarket chains continue to keep prices high even though they see that production costs have decreased," Harris announced that she would launch a fight against price gouging.

Promising to punish grocery stores that do not lower prices with legislation, Harris left it vague how she would achieve this. Harris gave her first interview on Thursday, 39 days after taking over the nomination. Addressing the economy directly in the first question, the US Vice President emphasized once again that she would fight price gouging, but again did not detail her plan. President Biden had previously brought up the plan to fight price gouging and bring chain grocery stores into line, but this vision could not be implemented.

TRUMP: SOVIET-STYLE PRICE CONTROL

A different approach to Harris's plan came from Trump. Using the term "Soviet-style price control" for the plan to fight price gouging, the Republican candidate has been accusing Harris of being a communist for weeks. At a rally in Pennsylvania last month, Trump said, "Kamala has become a full-blown Communist. She wants to destroy our country. After causing disastrous inflation, Comrade Kamala has now announced that she wants to implement socialist price controls." Elon Musk, the world's richest businessman and owner of the platform X, claimed that if Harris's economic policies are implemented, bread lines will form in the US.

While the Democratic candidate continues to provide no details on how she will implement her plan, laws to fight price gouging already exist in more than 35 states. Most of the laws are based on specific reasons such as emergencies or natural disasters and prohibit sellers from raising the prices of certain basic goods above a certain threshold. However, Harris's proposed plan does not resemble the laws in the states.

News Source: 12punto