CNBC’s Joe Kernen grew increasingly frustrated with his guest Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Friday as she repeatedly defended Vice President Kamala Harris’s promise to pass a federal ban on price gouging in the food industry.
On Squawk Box, Kernen kicked off his interview with Warren by arguing why banning price gouging is essentially price control and that policy doesn’t work.
“If beef is too high, people don’t move to chicken because competitors don’t come in to undercut where the beef prices are. Nothing works when you try to artificially try to control prices. It’s just a supply and demand issue. It’s a flawed idea,” he said.
“So did you have a question here?” Warren asked.
“Yes, why would you propose a flawed idea when the real problem — if you really want to help the middle class, if you really, sincerely want to help people having trouble at the grocery store, it’s not price gouging that’s the issue, and if you look at it seriously and you really want to help him, let’s do something about it together, fine,” Kernen shot back.
“I understand if you want to do a lecture about this, but let’s just start with where have you been for the last 30 years as three dozen states have price gouging laws and they have used them effectively?” Warren responded.
Kernen later called the effort a “fool’s errand” noting that grocery stores have much smaller profit margins than in other industries like technology. There would be no practical way to control prices across a supply chain without the cost coming back on the consumer, he said. Kernen also accused Harris, Warren, and others of focusing on “price gouging” to distract from other things driving inflation, like government spending.
“How do you decide? This is not the government’s job to decide these things. It’s a fool’s errand. And also, you’re using it to divert the real cause of inflation over the last four years which is you had demand after the pandemic, which obviously there was a lot because reopened, and all of a sudden there are supply chain issues and the demand is juiced by all of this stimulus from the [Inflation Reduction Act] and all of the other spending that we did,” he said.
“One of the causes of prices going up is there are companies that have market dominance that have said, oh, this is a moment when everyone is talking about —” Warren said before a frustrated Kernen cut in.
“Okay, give me another one. Name another one. Give me an instance,” he said.
“Can I please finish my argument?” Warren asked.
The two continued their heated exchange with Warren arguing that it’s “price gouging” on top of inflation that’s the problem, while Kernen insisted price gouging in the food industry is nowhere near enough of a problem to inflate prices as much as they are.
“You just want to keep talking, and you won’t let me finish,” Warren said at one point.
Kernen accused Warren of being “disingenuous” with her figures, arguing the rising profit margins of food-based companies can be attributed to a number of factors beyond price gouging.
“The cure for higher prices is when people come in and undercut those prices and supply goes back up. This has been since 1776!” Kernen said.
Watch above via CNBC.
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