‘I Support It’: WaPo Columnist Who Hammered Harris Over Call For ‘Price Controls’ Does Full 180 After Hearing Speech

Screenshot/CNN

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell said Friday afternoon she supported Vice President Kamala Harris’s take on lowering prices after she made headlines earlier in the day for criticizing the presumptive Democratic party nominee.

Prior to Harris’s economic policy rollout speech Friday afternoon, it was widely reported Harris would call for the federal government to intervene regarding the cost of groceries – including instituting “price controls” if she is elected.

In an early morning piece for the Post , Rampell criticized Harris in an opinion piece that was headlined, “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?” Rampell wrote:

It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter. In a news release Wednesday, her campaign said the first 100 days of her presidency would 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.”

Rampell concluded an attempt by Harris to intervene with the free market could backfire badly.

She later told CNN that Harris’s proposal reminded her of failed policies in Latin America and in the former Soviet Union.

“But it also would be very bad for markets,” Rampell said. “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, plenty of uncertainty.

Rampell concluded it would be difficult for her to envision “any form of legislation that preserves the spirit of what she’s proposing that would at best do nothing and at worst cause a lot of harm.”

Harris did not outright call for the Federal Trade Commission to intervene during her speech in North Carolina, a fact that was highlighted on social media by Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias .

Rampell shared Yglesias’s post on X (formerly Twitter) and commented that after hearing Harris speak, she supported her message.

During her Friday remarks, Harris claimed “price gouging” was a major factor for food prices that are ravaging Americans’ bank accounts.

“I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food. My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead,” Harris said.