Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' proposal to combat price gouging continues to be the subject of misleading accusations from ideological opponents in mainstream and right-wing media. The latest flare-up came from CNBC’s flagship morning news program, which repeatedly and falsely labeled the Harris proposal as a form of “price controls.”

One problem with that narrative, as University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers noted, is “that’s actually not what Vice President Harris has suggested we do.”

On the August 28 edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box, MAGA co-anchor Joe Kernen introduced the segment by proclaiming that “VP Harris had a choice between telling Americans that they pay higher prices because of the inflation her administration helped create … or she could blame corporations, she chose the latter.”

Conservative columnist and economist Veronique De Rugy responded to Kernen’s softball setup by acknowledging that Harris' proposal was politically popular before dismissively comparing it to the sky-high tariff proposals being floated by convicted former President Donald Trump, which economists across the political spectrum (including De Rugy herself) widely suggest will result in increased consumer prices that may super charge inflation going forward. De Rugy continually labeled the Harris proposal as a form of “price control,” a misleading description she has recently reiterated in columns published by National Review. (De Rugy is often at odds with much of Trump's economic agenda, but she did co-author a chapter of the pro-Trump manifesto Project 2025, where she called for abolishing the Export–Import Bank of the United States.)

After almost three minutes denigrating the Harris proposal, the panel finally pivoted to commentary from Justin Wolfers, who noted an important aspect overlooked by Kernen and De Rugy: Kamala Harris did not propose price controls.

According to Wolfers, “Generally speaking, when markets are functioning well, price controls are a bad idea even though they are often a popular idea.” Quoting Harris, he added that the vice president’s proposal is focused on “opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules” before concluding that “she's not talking about price controls, not once has she used that word.” Wolfers then reiterated that “economists as a tribe, we’re very upset whenever we think there’s price controls happening. We’ve got to look at the policy — that’s actually not what Vice President Harris has suggested we do.”

Faced with this simple fact, Kernen derailed the conversation by complaining that an initiative to fight price gouging ought not to have been among Harris’ first policy proposals while misleadingly boasting that “wages are still down from when her administration came into office.” (Real wages are higher now than they were pre-pandemic, but lower than they were in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic’s massive disruptions of the labor market and the government’s infusion of stimulus relief.)

Kernen falsely suggested that Harris was blaming price gouging for the systemic inflation witnessed in the United States over the past four years. Harris did not blame price gouging for inflation, centering blame for that phenomenon on disruptions caused by the global pandemic. (Inflation was also a truly global phenomenon, not one centered in the United States, and the U.S. currently enjoys one of the lowest inflation rates among developed countries.)

Wolfers later responded to Kernen’s outburst by recentering the conversation on the actual policies being forwarded by Harris, which he reiterated are not price controls, and contrasting them with the utter vapidity of Trump’s proposals to tackle higher costs of living.

CNBC is not alone among mainstream news outlets blasting the Harris campaign over nonexistent price controls, and much of the argument in this segment echoed misleading reporting and commentary published in The Washington Post last week, which was actually cited briefly at the end of the segment and has already become fodder for the right-wing media’s campaign to smear Harris.

Watch the full segment below: