Harris to propose banning ‘price gouging’ on food and groceries in NC economic speech

This story will be updated. Check back for live updates on Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Raleigh.

In her first visit to North Carolina since her elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to discuss how she plans to address a key, enduring issue for voters: the rising cost of living.

As she faces questions about what her economic platform will look like, and whether and in which ways it’ll differ from the policies of the Biden administration, Harris is set to deliver her first major policy address since becoming her party’s nominee in Raleigh on Friday.

During her speech, Harris is expected to announce a number of new policies to deal with high food, prescription drug, and housing costs, including proposals to impose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price gouging” in the food and grocery industries, provide up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers, and expand the child tax credit to provide middle- and low-income families with more financial relief.

Her campaign said Harris would seek to impose the federal price-gouging ban on those industries within her first 100 days by “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,” and “securing new authority” for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to “investigate and impose harsh penalties” on corporations “that choose to break these rules.”

Ahead of her speech, Harris’s campaign indicated that she will take aim at companies that have rebounded after the pandemic and seen production costs level off and profits increase, but have “nevertheless kept prices high” and failed to pass along savings to consumers.

The campaign said that while it’s normal for prices to fluctuate, Harris “recognizes there is a big difference between fair pricing and the excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business that Americans have seen in the food and grocery industry.”

The other policy proposals the campaign previewed before her visit seek to address rental and housing costs, the housing supply, prescription drug prices, medical debt, and tax cuts for middle-class families.

In a statement praising Harris and her “worker-focused agenda” on Friday morning, NC AFL-CIO President MaryBe McMillan said that working families across the state “are sick and tired of struggling to survive on wages that barely cover housing and necessities, while companies price-gouge us just to pad their profits so CEOs can cut themselves massive checks.”

McMillan said that the Harris campaign “knows what working people need are policies that will lower their costs, protect their wallets from rampant corporate greed, and help them save more of their hard-earned dollars.”

Trip to NC ahead of DNC

Harris’s return to North Carolina to unveil the broad points of her economic agenda, just before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday, marks her eighth trip to the battleground state this year. Former President Donald Trump, who won the state in 2016 and 2020, but only by 1.3% the second time, campaigned on his economic plans in Asheville on Wednesday.

During his speech, Trump blamed inflation that reached a 40-year high in 2022 on the Biden-Harris administration, and said his plan for the economy would focus on improving affordability and tackling supply chain issues, the Charlotte Observer reported . He also pledged to cut energy costs by 50% or more within his first 12 to 18 months in office by rolling back the current administration’s clean energy policies, and scaling up domestic oil production.

Multiple polls have shown that inflation and the economy are top issues for voters here and across the country. The annual inflation rate is currently at 2.9%, the lowest since March 2021, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Labor this week.

Trump had maintained a consistent lead over President Joe Biden in North Carolina in recent months, but new polling in the last few weeks has shown Harris erasing much of that advantage, and a poll from the Cook Political Report conducted July 26 to Aug. 2 and released this week found her registering a slight lead , well within the margin of error, over Trump.

An average of recent North Carolina polls collected by RealClearPolitics , however, shows Trump with a lead of 2.4 percentage points over Harris. Those polls were all conducted between July 19 and Aug. 8.

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