Presidential candidate Kamala Harris wants to lower your grocery bill. How she plans to do that may be debated until November.

During a Friday campaign speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Democratic presidential nominee proposed legislation to combat food price gouging. She says it’s to blame for many of the soaring prices in stores today.

“My plan will include new penalties for opportunist 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. “We will help the food industry become more competitive because I believe competition is the life blood of our economy, and more competition means lower prices for you and your families.”

According to Harris, most businesses are playing by the rules, creating jobs, and contributing to the economy. However, she says federal action needs to be taken against those who aren’t.

Harris pointed to her time as California attorney general when she went after prescription drug makers and electronics companies for inflated prices. She says her efforts amounted to a more than $1 billion win for consumers.

“So believe me – as president, I will go after bad actors,” Harris said.

The vice president noted “many of the big food companies” are seeing their highest profits in two decades. Still, she offered few specifics on how her legislation would define “price gouging.”  

In March, a Federal Trade Commission report concluded some large companies in the grocery retail industry used pandemic supply chain issues and higher costs as a way to increase profits. Some also exaggerated the negative impact those issues had on their bottom line.

“As the pandemic illustrated, a major shock to the supply chain can have cascading effects on consumers, including the prices they pay for groceries,” FTC Chair Lin Khan said. “The FTC’s report examining U.S. grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.”

Will farmers be impacted?

There is not much modern precedent for price control legislation in the United States. The most recent example is probably President Nixon’s attempt to fight inflation with price and wage freezes in the early 1970s.

Those policies were popular at the time and may have helped him win re-election. In hindsight, economists generally agree that Nixon’s plan did little to improve the economy.

What Harris is proposing is much more targeted and limited in scope. According to farm policy expert Jonathan Coppess from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, her policy’s impact on farmers will likely be minimal given the realities of the modern food system.

USDA data shows very little of the food dollar actually makes it to the farm gate. Therefore, controls at the retail level may not have much impact at all.

“Of course, companies are very good at driving the impacts down the supply chain and so it is possible that where the farmer sees little of the food dollar, they might see more of the impact from this,” Coppess says. “How much more is a difficult question to untangle without more details.”

Critics waste no time bashing Harris

Before Harris even gave her speech, Republican nominee Donald Trump mocked her plan. During a Thursday news conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, Trump called the Harris proposal “communist price controls” that would lead to food shortages.

“They probably can’t do it legally, and that will drive up food prices,” Trump added.

National Chicken Council interim president Gary Kushner also issued a Thursday preemptive statement decrying Harris’ plan. He says Americans are seeing inflation in every part of their lives, not just the meat case.

"Chicken prices are largely affected by supply and demand, by major input costs like corn, soybeans, energy, packaging, transportation, and by fiscal policy and burdensome government regulations. Not price gouging,” Kushner says. "It’s time for this administration to stop using the meat and poultry industry as a scapegoat and a distraction for the root causes of inflation and the significant challenges facing our economy."

Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts echoed those sentiments. She blames historically low inventory for record high cattle prices.

“The Harris campaign rhetoric unfairly targets the meat and poultry industry and does not match the facts,” Potts says. “Food prices continue to come down from the highs of the pandemic. Prices for meat are based on supply and demand. Avian influenza, a shortage of beef cattle and high input prices like energy and labor are all factors that determine prices at the meat case.”

Inflation rates indeed returned to near pre-pandemic levels in recent months. However, as Harris herself noted, the average price of ground beef is still almost 50% higher than it was before the pandemic.

Voters say they want a candidate who will fight high grocery prices. Whether they think Harris can do that remains the unanswered question.