Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks, Saturday, July 3, 2021, at the Carpenters International Training Center in Las Vegas. Photo by Cameron Smith | Official White House photo / File
Vice President Kamala Harris is zeroing in on high food and housing prices as her campaign previews an economic policy speech Friday in North Carolina, promising to push for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries and laying out plans to cut other costs as she looks to address one of voters’ top concerns.
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years, but food prices are 21 percent above where they were three years ago. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has pointed to inflation as a key failing of the Biden administration.
The cost of housing is another major driver of inflation, and Harris plans to use federal resources to promote the construction of 3 million new housing units if elected, pass legislation to slow rent increases and provide a $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
The Harris housing plan includes establishing a tax credit for homebuilders who construct starter homes for first-time homebuyers, and doubling a $20 billion Biden administration “innovation fund” for states trying to find ways to boost housing construction. The down-payment assistance would significantly expand on a Biden proposal to provide federal support to first-time buyers.
The vice president, in her housing plan, also wants to crack down on data-sharing and price-setting tools that landlords to set rents, and to remove a tax incentive that has led investment firms to purchase wide swaths of the country’s housing stock. She intends to contrast her plan with Trump, who was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination five decades ago.
Proptech firm RealPage’s popular multifamily revenue-management software has been accused in the media of aiding “price-fixing” by creating a means to share otherwise-private data among property managers, and pushing rents higher than the nation’s ultra-tight apartment market otherwise would send them.
The company denies wrongdoing and pointed to the relatively small size of its client pool and constricted supply caused by years of underbuilding in most of the nation’s metro areas. However, the company is reportedly facing a federal antitrust investigation as well as dozens of lawsuits from renters and state attorneys general.
However, it’s unclear what appetite exists for any of these proposals in Congress should Republicans retain control of the house or gain control of the Senate in November’s elections.
Harris is drawing closer to President Joe Biden’s legislative and economic record, casting her initiatives as an extension of the work their administration has done over the last three and a half years.
Americans are more likely to trust Trump over Harris when it comes to handling the economy, but the difference is slight: 45 percent say Trump is better positioned to handle the economy, while 38 percent say that about Harris. About 1 in 10 trust neither Harris nor Trump to better handle the economy, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
Trump, speaking Thursday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, argued Harris is proposing “communist price controls” that would lead to shortages, hunger and more inflation. He was flanked by popular grocery store items as he sought to highlight the rising cost of food.
Consumer confidence surveys show that high prices remain a persistent source of frustration for shoppers, particularly among lower-income Americans, even as inflation has cooled. Overall prices are about 21 percent higher than before the pandemic. Average incomes have risen by slightly more than that, boosting spending even as Americans report a gloomy outlook on the economy.
Supply disruptions during the pandemic were one reason prices rose. Many meat processing plants closed temporarily after COVID-19 outbreaks among their workers.
But some economists have argued that large food and consumer goods companies took advantage of pandemic-era disruptions. Economist Isabella Weber at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, called it “seller’s inflation.” Others referred to it as “greedflation.”
Harris’ proposals on price gouging come as there is some evidence that “sellers’ inflation” is fading. Consumers have become more discriminating, and are passing on some higher-price purchases while seeking out cheaper alternatives.
Grocery prices, on average nationwide, have risen just 1.1 percent in the past 12 months, in line with pre-pandemic increases, the government said Wednesday.
AP staff writers Josh Funk and Christopher Rugaber and Darlene Superville and Commercial Record staff writer James Sanna contributed to this report.
