The Washington Post mischaracterized Harris’ policy as “gimmick” price controls and suggested she is a “communist”
Rampell’s August 15 column assailing Harris’ then-yet-to-be-released price gouging policies was titled: “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?”
While lacking specific details of how Harris’ proposed consumer protections would define and combat price gouging, Rampell imagined a catastrophic scenario where Harris’ plans led to “a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry” and where government intrusions into private business created “shortages, black markets and hoarding.”
Even though she cited the Harris campaign's press release, which clearly stated that the vice president would endorse a “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” the column simply invented a scenario where these “price controls” besieged the entire consumer economy.
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.
At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might accidentally raise prices.
Rampell was not alone at The Washington Post in demeaning Harris' price gouging proposal, and her column even linked back to a news article published earlier that day, where the ominous specter of “price controls” loomed large. In that article, the Post outsourced its degradation of Harris' plan (which again, had yet to actually be released) to the right-wing Manhattan Institute, which slammed the policy before anyone involved had even read it. (With the benefit of having actually read Harris' proposal, economists James K. Galbraith and Isabella Weber published a column today in The Boston Globe lauding Harris' policy to target price gouging.) From the Post:
Republican and many Democratic economists see mandatory price controls as a counterproductive form of government intervention that discourages firms from producing enough supply to meet demand.
“This represents a return to the lazy, failed economic policies of the 1970s, when price controls proved to be a disaster for the economy,” said Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “It shows Harris is pandering for easy answers on the economy, even more aggressively than Biden had. Biden had talked about price gouging but was not this aggressive, seeking reforms to actually ban it.”
An editorial published on August 16 by the Post’s editorial board offered similar, misplaced criticism of Harris’ proposal — which she had outlined in a speech that day — repeatedly denouncing the vice president’s “gimmicks” and adding that “thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon’s failed price controls from the 1970s.”
In particular, while lampooning Harris’ proposal to tackle price gouging, the Post’s editorial board was simply wrong about the content of her speech.
The editorial board attacked Harris for supposedly not using her speech to discuss the inflationary pressures created by supply chain disruptions during the pandemic, writing: “One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains. … The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business.”
In fact, she literally said, “We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down and failed, but our supply chains have now improved and prices are still too high.” She also explicitly voiced support for those businesses that “are creating jobs, contributing to our economy, and playing by the rules,” focusing instead on bad actors that prey on weary consumers.
Misleading Post opinion pieces gave ammunition to Fox News and Trump
The Post editorial, and especially Rampell’s column, gave ammunition to Fox News, which cited both in their red-baiting coverage of Harris’ proposed policy.
Fox host Dana Perino cited the editorial during a segment in which she falsely called Harris’ plan “price control.”
And Fox senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich cited Rampell’s column in a report while an on-screen chyron referred to the policy as “price controls.”
Fox continued citing Rampell’s column to criticize Harris, focusing on the “communist” label she emphasized.
Fox host Sean Hannity shared a blog post he wrote about the column on X (formerly known as Twitter), titled: “WAPO WALLOPS KAMALA: When Your Opponent Calls You ‘Communist,’ Maybe Don’t Propose Price Controls?”
Fox News itself published an article titled “Harris' price control proposal risks validating 'communist' label, says liberal Washington Post columnist.”
Multiple Fox personalities and other conservatives also labeled Harris’ plan “communism” and called her “Comrade Kamala.”
And Fox shared quotes from Trump that echoed Rampell in her column. He called Harris’ proposal a “communist system” that “will cause rationing, hunger and skyrocketing prices.”
The Trump campaign’s “Trump War Room” X account also shared Rampell’s column.
In its write-up of the “wild speculation” swirling around Harris' price gouging plan, Axios linked to just two pieces to make its point about partisan critics “conflating the idea with Soviet-style price controls.” One was an absurd New York Post front page labeling the plan as “Kamunism,” and the other was Rampell’s column.
Back in June, Rampell ridiculed the practice of labeling people as communists for sharing various economic ideas. And Post columnist Philip Bump wrote a column this week stating “former President Donald Trump keeps invoking the specter of communism. No one appears to be buying it.”
