U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris is set to make her first major economic policy speech as the Democratic nominee for president Friday, with an expected focus on lowering prices for consumers.
The expected plan for the speech in North Carolina reflects a recognition that the economy remains top of mind for voters heading into November’s election after years of high inflation.
The Harris campaign said there will be a particular emphasis on “price gouging” on groceries.
Year-over-year inflation in the U.S. has reached its lowest level in more than three years, falling below three per cent, the U.S. Labor Department said Wednesday. But food prices and other consumer goods are 21 per cent above where they were three years ago.
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.
There have been similar concerns in Canada, where consumers say they’re struggling with the cost of living despite data showing the Canadian economy is technically staying afloat — a disconnect economists have dubbed a “me-cession.”
Major grocers in Canada have also been accused of price gouging or “greedflation,” and the federal government says it is working to improve competition in the sector as a way to drive down food prices.
Harris on Friday will call for a federal law banning corporations from setting excessive prices and call out the practices of meat processing companies, the Harris campaign said late on Wednesday.
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Her proposal would allow the Federal Trade Commission to investigate abuses and impose penalties in the food and grocery industry, while her administration would put more scrutiny on merger activity in the American sector.
Harris’s Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, has hammered Harris and U.S. President Joe Biden on inflation and the rising cost of food and other consumer goods.
Biden undertook his own efforts to contain rising food prices, including creating a “competition council” that tried to reduce costs by increasing competition within the meat industry, part of a broader effort to show that his administration is trying to combat inflation.
His administration has also made cutting prescription drug costs a key priority.
The Harris campaign said she will continue with Biden’s pledge to expand the cost savings for prescription drugs to Americans of all ages, something Biden said he would have pursued in a second term. Other plans expected to be announced Friday — such as efforts to lower housing prices and expand the child tax credit for middle- and lower-class families — are in line with the Biden economic agenda.
But Harris’s advisors say she will seek to make that agenda her own, and one that appeals more to kitchen-table voters in battleground states she needs to win to secure the White House.
One advisor described the shift to Reuters as “same values, different vision.”
Reuters reported that Harris will announce plans to spur the construction of millions of new homes to address a growing housing crisis, along with measures to lower rents.
Harris will also draw contrasts with Trump on tax policy and tariffs, and maintain Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on people who make US$400,000 or less a year, advisers said. Trump slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 per cent from 35 per cent and implemented other tax breaks that are set to expire next year — cuts he wants to make permanent if he wins in November.
Trump has claimed Biden and Harris’s economic agenda is responsible for inflation, and said Thursday at a press conference surrounded by grocery items that Harris would drive prices up even more. He argues increased energy production and sweeping tariffs on international imports would lower consumer costs.
Canadian economists have warned Trump’s proposed tariffs would damage Canada’s economy and that Biden’s economic agenda would cause relatively less harm, despite Biden’s focus on “Buy American” policies that prioritize domestic manufacturing. Canada has managed to secure carve-outs to those policies in the auto manufacturing sector.
Those economists are eager to see how Harris may differ from Biden, if at all, and whether impacts on consumer goods will have ripple effects in Canada.
Whoever wins the U.S. presidency will also oversee the first review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trilateral trade that replaced NAFTA during the Trump administration. The review, which is mandated to take place every six years, will begin in 2026.
— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters