Under pressure to defend Kamala Harris’ grocery price gouging plan, some Democratic lawmakers are delivering a quiet message to anxious allies: Don’t worry about the details. It’s never going to pass Congress.
The Harris campaign’s proposal, unveiled as part of her first big economic policy speech, has become a focal point for her presidential rival, Donald Trump, and fellow Republicans, who claim she’s pushing “communist price controls.” It has also alarmed food industry officials and even some left-of-center economists, who’ve warned such policies can hurt more than they help.
While much in Harris’ price gouging plan remains vague, a central piece is simply a call for Congress to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging in the food and grocery sectors, which largely mirrors legislation reintroduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) earlier this year.
But such a bill has no chance of passing Congress anytime soon, even if Democrats win the White House and Congress this November, according to six Democratic lawmakers and five Democratic aides who were granted anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. These people said Democrats in Congress have privately been telling critics that this part of the Harris plan is not viable.
Rather, it’s a messaging tactic — a way to show that she understands food prices remain an economic burden for many Americans and to redirect voters’ anger about inflation to corporations, in a way that progressives in particular have cheered.
“It’s clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals,” said one of the Democratic lawmakers, who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the proposal.
“I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there,” echoed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a potential 2028 presidential contender, during an Aug.18 interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press. The proposal, Whitmer added, was intended to address the issue in “broad strokes.”
Harris would also likely need Congress’s buy-in for another key part of her plan: giving more resources to the FTC and other agencies that carry out antitrust enforcement. That, too, could face some stiff GOP opposition.
Even many Democrats remain skeptical, or at least uncertain about how Harris would carry out her proposal, if elected. They’re still working on getting details, but many have left that for after the DNC.
“I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” said a second Democratic lawmaker.
Harris has been under pressure to provide more detail on her policy priorities, after four years largely toeing the line set by President Joe Biden and his aides. The rollout of her plan to combat food inflation, however, has sparked concerns among business leaders over which economic advisers are driving her policy decisions. Pieces of her plan, like increasing competition in the meat sector, are straight from the Biden playbook under his former top economic adviser Brian Deese — who is now advising Harris’ campaign. But the broad price gouging language that’s triggered so much backlash signals a more progressive agenda.
That backlash has tempered Harris allies’ initial push to paint the proposal as a bold, progressive idea. Since introducing the price gouging plan, her advisers have sought to soften criticism of the proposal by downplaying its overall impact on the market — and emphasizing that the goal is simply to target a small cohort of potential “bad actors,” rather than generate the kind of sweeping overhaul suggested by the plan’s initial rollout.
Brian Nelson, a top Harris economic adviser, told reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that the plan simply aimed to match up federal standards with so-called price gouging guardrails that already exist in 37 states. Harris allies note in some of those states, it’s Republican officials who are the enforcers.
But those restrictions would only apply during emergencies, like the Covid pandemic, and largely just empower agencies to more aggressively go after pricing behavior far outside the norm.
“She’s going to work with Congress to ensure that it is directed at bad actors, bad activity,” Nelson said. “It’s not meant to set prices or price levels or anything like that. And that is not the way current state laws around price gouging are.”
Pressed on the issue during a roundtable hosted by Bloomberg News, Nelson could not provide any specific examples of companies that are price gouging.
And he described Harris as simply trying to outline her own principles on the issue, of which only one element was a “call” for legislation.
“One of the principles is really to make sure that the federal legislation aligns with those state laws,” he said.
Another Democrat familiar with the campaign’s internal deliberations said the plan had been distorted during its initial rollout, blaming in part a Washington Post op-ed that harshly criticized the proposal — and gave the impression it sought to set sweeping price controls. Democrats have noted Harris’ language around price gouging in her economic speech in North Carolina didn’t go as far as the materials her campaign rolled out earlier that week.
“Voters are looking for a president who will bring down prices and take on greedy corporations and the con man who knows a thing or two about cheating working people out of their hard-earned money,” said Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak. “While Donald Trump will hike taxes on middle-class families by $4,000, Vice President Harris has a common-sense plan with bipartisan support to lower costs, and she’ll fight for it every day in the White House.”
But some Harris allies have been miffed about the response to her plans.
They’ve noted even some Republicans on Capitol Hill support efforts to crack down on price gouging and boost competition in the hyper-consolidated meat sector — which is dominated by only a handful of companies. Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley has been leading an effort for decades with little success, largely due to opposition from others in his party.
In reality, the next president — whether that be Harris or Trump — will have few policy options to significantly or quickly lower food costs, which are largely determined by complex supply chains and hundreds of other external factors, including energy prices and global conflicts. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from hammering Democrats for months over inflation and particularly the painfully high grocery costs Americans have been grappling with since the early days of the pandemic.
It was one of Biden’s biggest liabilities during his ill-fated reelection campaign, and remains so for Harris as she races to put together an economic agenda.
“Food prices are the most visible piece of what we’re trying to address,” said a third Hill Democrat, noting the party needs to put forward some sort of policy to show they are working to lower Americans’ grocery bills.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) argued, regardless of how economists analyze the plans, most Americans understand the broad concepts Harris laid out.
“I think most people understand that there are unfair practices that are happening, and we need to stop that,” Duckworth said in a live interview with POLITICO during the DNC.
The Harris campaign’s lack of detail on price gouging, which was kept general by design, has both helped and hurt her efforts to put forward a serious economic proposal in recent days — essentially allowing everyone to participate in a choose-your-own-adventure exercise about how it would actually work.
Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and more left-leaning Hill Democrats have praised the move as a way to keep corporations from unfairly jacking up prices on everyday Americans, while Donald Trump and the GOP have argued it will trigger massive, Soviet-style bread lines across the country and destroy small grocery stores. The Washington Post editorial board called the proposal “populist gimmicks.”
As POLITICO first reported, the boldest piece of Harris’ plans is the call for Congress to pass the first-ever federal ban on “excessive” food price gouging — which would give the Federal Trade Commission a larger mandate to prosecute companies that violate the ban. Her proposal also appears to rely on trying to beef up FTC enforcement under current authorities by providing additional guidance and directives, while giving the agency a huge amount of discretion to define terms like “excessive.” Any such moves would likely face a slew of legal challenges, especially after the Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling.
Progressive Democrats like Warren have been pleading with Biden White House officials in recent months to essentially take the steps Harris is promising to do now. They want Biden to unleash new executive powers to direct the FTC and other agencies to increase their price gouging enforcement, showing voters that Democrats are still working to lower food costs, which remain a top concern for voters ahead of the election.
Jayapal praised Harris’ move in a post on X, writing that Harris “has a proven record of going after corporate greed and price gouging — and winning.”
“Let’s deliver for the people,” Jaypal added.
Warren, who got a prime DNC speaking slot on the final day of the convention, played up Harris’ willingness to embrace more of progressive effort to crack down on corporate greed, especially compared to Trump.
Harris “will take on the giant corporations that are squeezing American families,” Warren told the raucous DNC crowd. “During the pandemic, we worked together in the Senate to stop price gouging. And as president, she will lower costs for your family.”
Hill Democrats have generally been dismissive of the GOP attacks on the plan. “They call everything communism,” said a fourth Hill Democrat. But some have been troubled by the reception to Harris’ plan in other corners of the private sector beyond the biggest businesses.
The National Grocers Association, an industry group that represents the independent supermarket sector and supports efforts to boost competition in the industry, quickly called Harris’ plans “a solution in search of a problem.”
“Rather than proposing new legislation far-off in the future,” the federal government should focus on enforcing antitrust laws already on the books, the group said.
The Harris campaign also didn’t warn or elicit feedback from key grocery industry groups about her proposals, even smaller organizations that support more federal involvement to boost competition in the food sector.
“That’s why I think it’s not a serious policy,” said a food industry official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the plans.
“I’m sure it polls well,” the person said. “But it’s an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.” Smaller grocers are already operating at razor-thin margins, they noted. While it’s not the norm, some food sector executives have argued the industry has gone too far with prices in recent years.
As president, Biden has been vocal in criticizing food corporations he claims engage in grocery price gouging and “shrinkflation” — a term for when companies put less food in packages, but charge the same price. But White House officials have resisted progressives’ calls to take the kind of steps Harris is proposing, privately arguing they’re unnecessary. FTC Commissioner Lina Khan is already hyper-vigilant against the kind of corporate price gouging and other unfair business practices Democrats argue are driving up everyday consumer costs, they point out.
“If we had a good tool we’d definitely have used it!” a person familiar with the White House deliberations, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private talks, noted earlier this year.
