“Nobody understands what that means,” Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said Friday night about Vice President Kamala Harris's blaming of inflation on “price gouging” in a speech outlining her economic plan if elected in November.
After Harris' speech, Kudlow appeared on “Special Report with Bret Baier” to outline his economic plan if elected president, which included a proposal to impose a federal ban on “corporate price gouging” at food and grocery stores. Kudlow criticized the proposal, saying it would not only confuse people, but that the Federal Trade Commission has tried a similar approach to address allegations of price gouging before and lost every case over the past three and a half years. (RELATED: 'Kamala, check it out': Steve Forbes criticizes Harris for 'modern socialism', says she doesn't want to 'liberate' America)
“These are price controls by any other name. So it's like sheep in sheep's clothing. Price controls because they are price controls,” Kudlow said. “We know how badly it worked for Nixon. Price controls never worked in Russia, the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Cuba. They never worked. Price controls create shortages. They create black markets, and people cry shortages, which causes the controls to be lifted and ultimately prices to go up. But nobody really knows what she means by price gouging. There's no definition.”
“You hear all this talk about regulations and announcements about the Federal Trade Commission, which has brought a ton of cases about price gouging and so-called corporate greed, and they’ve lost every single one of them in the last three and a half years.
Kudlow went on to point out the low corporate profit margins at grocery stores and questioned why Harris hadn't accused companies like Apple and Microsoft of “making too much money” when their margins are much higher.
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“One more thing: Mr. Harris was yelling about beef producers, chicken producers, grocery stores. So I looked at the profit margins of each of them. Are they making a profit? I mean, if they were ripping somebody off, Brett, they'd be making a ton of profits, and they're not,” Kudlow continued. “Grocery stores have a 1.2% profit margin. Meat, beef, chicken, they have a 4.7% margin. Corporate America as a whole has a 8.5% margin. Look, if Mr. Harris wants to accuse somebody of making too much money, Apple has a 26% margin, Microsoft has a 36% margin, NVIDIA has a 53% margin. You know what I mean? There's no proof, nobody knows what it is, but it's bad. If it worked, it's bad.”
Questions about Harris' economic policies came after her speech, which touched on attempts to tackle high costs, ease the housing shortage and cut taxes for some Americans. Prior to the speech, Washington Post columnist Katherine Rampell had criticized the vice president's plan. Editorial The media outlet accused Harris of focusing on price gouging.
“Nobody can explain what they mean by price gouging. Like the old line about porn, 'I know it when I see it,' what do they mean by exorbitant prices or exorbitant profit margins? It seems to be short for 'offensive prices or profit margins, too high,'” Rampell told CNN on Friday.
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