Vice President Kamala Harris' proposed ban on “price gouging” has been panned as an extreme policy, and some Democrats and media figures are working to clean up its impact.

August 16th speech In North Carolina, Harris unveiled her economic policy proposals, in which she proposed a federal ban on “price gouging” to lower food and grocery prices, but the plan drew criticism from across the country. Political spectrum The bill has been derided as collective price controls, extreme and likely ineffective. In the week since Harris introduced her plan, many Democrats and some prominent media figures and media outlets have rallied to reframe or gloss over her proposal as being more nuanced and less extreme than Republicans claim.

After Harris' proposal received sharp criticism from economists and commentators, an anonymous source with knowledge of the vice president's thinking said The New York Times reported that a “price gouging” ban would likely only go into effect in an emergency situation, such as in the wake of a pandemic or natural disaster. But because the US isn't currently facing such a situation, anonymous sources suggested that the ban, even if enacted, “may not actually do anything to lower food prices at this point.” (Related: Kamala Harris concludes DNC without releasing policy platform)

'Scariest proposal I've ever seen': Ex-Trump economic adviser responds to Kamala Harris' 'price gouging' planhttps://t.co/hhJgw3BhV7

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 17, 2024

Nevertheless, Democrats and some in the media have essentially tried to defend the proposal, arguing that it's not as simple as that.

Axios reported on Tuesday story Headlined “How Would Banning Price Gouging Actually Work?” the article states that policies like Harris's “are often disliked by economists, but they have been around for a long time” and that “most Americans intuitively understand the rationale behind them, and Harris is trying to appeal to voters, not academics and newspaper columnists.”

In an Axios article, Zephyr TeachoutTeachout, a professor at Fordham Law School, wrote in his book Thursday: piece Writing in The Atlantic under the headline “Sometimes You Have to Ignore Economists,” Teachout wrote that “Kamala Harris's proposal to ban price gouging may irritate academics, but it makes sense to everyone else,” defending the policy as neither radical nor new, while acknowledging that its exact scope is unclear.

In a Monday column, New York Times economist and columnist Paul Krugman described Harris' economic policies, which include an anti-price gouging bill, as “solid left-of-center policies.” column.

“I'm surprised at how many credulous commentators, not just on the right, are advocating price controls and calling her the second coming of Richard Nixon, if not the next Nicolas Maduro,” Krugman wrote in the column. “What she actually wants is legislation banning food price gouging. Clearly this is a populist political gesture, a way to offer something to voters outraged by rising food prices. But just because something is popular doesn't mean it's a bad idea.”

Trump's camp Claims The allegation that Harris employed communist price controls was just “another false attack” on the vice president, CBS host Margaret Brennan said. said On Sunday's “Face the Nation,” CBS also invited Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on the show to discuss why Harris' proposal is more nuanced than outright socialist price controls. (Related: CNBC host upset after Elizabeth Warren speaks out against his price gouging stance)

Gretchen Whitmer says critics of Harris' price gouging plan are 'reading too much into it'https://t.co/h8GWuL2xvB

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 20, 2024

“It's clear that at least some corporate journalists are trying to defend Kamala's proposals, but that's a job they really don't want to do,” Bill D'Agostino, senior research analyst at the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, told DCNF. “She proposed price controls, so they're going to fight for price controls. This is when the real hacks show their true colors.”

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo recently said She also stepped in to deflect criticism of Harris' plan, saying she didn't believe a new government report that found 818,000 jobs supposedly created under Biden didn't actually exist. In an interview on Wednesday, she described the idea that Harris' proposal amounts to price controls as a “Republican talking point.” exterior On CNBC.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan also tried to downplay or contextualize Harris' proposal as more nuanced than outright price controls. According to While some of the criticism of Harris's “price gouging” ban has been made in good faith by some observers, other criticism of the policy “is nothing more than a vicious attack from the other side trying to characterize her as a socialist,” Ben Harris, a former Biden Treasury Department official, told the Washington Post.

“Her idea was a huge flop, and they can't take it back, so they have to 'contextualize' it, and they reference a pandemic and a national emergency,” J.D. Foster, a former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It was a stupid idea, and they're holding it up as an example of Harris' extreme ignorance of how the economy works.”

Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agreed that Harris' proposed federal ban on “price gouging” would effectively be an endorsement of price controls.

“Although most voters are too young to remember Richard Nixon's price and wage controls, they still have the right intuition: we don't want politicians to set prices,” Young told DCNF. “That's why Harris' price gouging proposals have drawn such a cold response, and why her supporters have tried to argue that bans on price gouging aren't really price controls; they're just price controls by a different name.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

All content produced by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan news service, is available free of charge to any legitimate news publisher with a large readership. All republished articles must include our logo, reporter byline, and affiliation with the DCNF. If you have any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact us at licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.