The Biden-Harris administration helped ratchet up inflation, now she wants to make it worse with price controls

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This year’s U.S. presidential contest should be called the “hold my beer” election. Just when you think one major candidate cornered the market on awfulness, the other ups the ante with something worse. In Kamala Harris’s case, she wants to tame cost-of-living worries largely resulting from inflationary Biden-Harris administration policies, with price controls that will choke the availability of goods and services.

Last week, just a day before unveiling economic proposals designed to set the tone for the Democratic National Convention, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris vowed, “When I am President, it will be a day one priority to bring down prices.” The next day, in her policy speech, she promised “the first ever federal ban on price gouging on food” amidst worries over grocery bills.

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It’s true that inflation and living costs rank at or near the top of concerns for Americans, who’ve seen their paychecks fail to keep up with rising prices in recent years. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator, in July 2024 it took US$120.25 to buy what US$100 purchased in January 2021 when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office. That timing isn’t coincidental. While excessive stimulus spending started under the Trump White House, the current administration doubled down on throwing money around as its preferred policy — and it owns the consequences.

“Inflation comes when aggregate demand exceeds aggregate supply,” economist John Cochrane of the Hoover Institution and the Cato Institute wrote in a March piece for the........

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