Republicans, Now Critical Of Kamala Harris, Have Targeted Price Gouging In The Past

It didn’t take long after Vice President Kamala Harris announced her plans to address corporate “price gouging” on Friday for Donald Trump to accuse her of proposing Soviet-style communism.

In an apparent reference to Harris’ admittedly vague plan to forbid “price gouging” on food, the former president wrote on Truth Social, “Kamala will implement SOVIET Style Price Controls,” one of several policies he claimed would make inflation “100 times WORSE.”

The Republican National Committee joined in, sharing the New York Post’s Saturday headline “Kamunism” on X with the caption, “Comrade Kamala.”

It is not clear exactly what would count as price gouging under Harris’ proposed federal ban.

But Harris made clear she agrees with those economists who have found that some corporations, rather than merely raising prices in response to a spike in demand relative to existing supply, have taken advantage of market conditions to pad their profits with higher prices. And in select industries, Harris and these economists contend, dominant corporations have found ways to muscle out competition such that there is no natural course-correction mechanism when this price gouging occurs.

What’s more, Harris singled out two industries, beef and pharmaceuticals, that have attracted scrutiny from plenty of Republicans.

In December, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced legislation restricting how pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), a middleman industry that negotiates prescription drug prices for insurance plans, can operate. The bill, which now has the support of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, would require PBMs to charge insurance plans the same amount PBMs reimburse pharmacies, and pass along to insurance plans any discounts they negotiate with pharmacies.

Grassley is a longtime critic of PBMs’ and pharmaceutical companies’ pricing practices, going so far as to accuse some companies of price gouging. “As a leading advocate for lowering drug prices in the U.S. Senate, I’ve hauled Big Pharma and pharmacy benefit manager executives before Congress, led a two-year bipartisan investigation into insulin price-gouging, and advanced bipartisan reforms to lower the cost of insulin and many other prescription drugs,” Grassley wrote in an October 2022 op-ed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

He sounds a whole lot like Harris, who said on Friday, “I’ll lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for everyone with your support, not only our seniors and demand transparency from the middlemen who operate between Big Pharma and the insurance companies, who use opaque practices to raise your drug prices and profit off your need for medicine.”

There are likewise a number of Republican lawmakers who have advocated for federal intervention to stop price gouging in the beef industry. Grassley joined Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in February 2023 to reintroduce the Meat Packing Special Investigator Act, which would create a new special investigator in the Department of Agriculture to crack down on meatpacking giants’ anticompetitive practices.

The trio argued that concentration in the meatpacking industry, which is now dominated by just four companies, has enabled corporations to at once squeeze independent cattle ranchers with lower purchase prices, and then charge consumers higher and higher prices in supermarkets.

“For years, the gap has widened between the price paid to cattle producers for their high-quality American products and the price of beef at the grocery store,” Rounds said at the time. “Meanwhile, the four largest beef packers, who control 85 percent of our beef processing capacity, have enjoyed record profits. This has resulted in an average of nearly 17,000 cattle ranchers going out of business each year since 1980.”

Harris alluded to similar dynamics when she lamented that the price of “ground beef is up 50%. Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades. And while many grocery chains pass along these savings, others still aren’t.”

“We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” she added. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.”

Some Republicans have even shared Harris’ concern about lack of competition in the supermarket industry.

Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, wrote to the Federal Trade Commission in September to encourage strict scrutiny of a potential merger between the supermarket conglomerates Kroger and Albertsons.

“The track record of grocery consolidation in our state does not bode well for Alaskans’ food security, affordability, and our dedicated workforce,” the pair wrote.

When the FTC sued to block the merger in February, Murkowski celebrated the decision. “This announcement will come as a relief to countless Alaskans,” she said. “From the potential for even higher grocery prices to longer-term store closures, there were just too many unknowns and uncertainties for this merger to move forward.”