Harris focuses on high food and housing prices as inflation plays big role in campaign

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is focusing on high food and housing prices as she announces an economic policy speech Friday in North Carolina, promising to push for a federal ban on grocery price gouging and unveil plans to cut other costs in an effort to address a top concern of voters.

Inflation year on year reached its lowest level in more than three years, but food prices are 21% higher than they were three years ago. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has singled out inflation as a key shortcoming of the Biden administration.

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Housing costs are another major factor in inflation. Harris plans to exploit federal money to promote 3 million novel homes if elected, pass legislation to snail-paced rent increases and provide $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.

Harris has increasingly played up President Joe Biden’s legislative and economic record, portraying her initiatives as a continuation of the work her administration has done over the past three and a half years.

Harris’ housing plan includes establishing a tax credit for homebuilders who build homes for first-time homebuyers and doubling the Biden administration’s $20 billion “innovation fund” for housing. The down payment assistance would significantly expand Biden’s proposal to provide federal support for first-time homebuyers.

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Earlier Thursday, Biden and Harris celebrated their efforts to lower prescription drug prices at an event in Maryland, marking Harris’ first joint speech with Biden since replacing him as the Democratic front-runner nearly four weeks ago.

They announced that drug price negotiations will lower the list prices of 10 Medicare programs by hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of dollars the most popular and steep drugsThe program was created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which focused on health care and climate. Harris’s vote in the Senate as vice president helped Democrats overcome unanimous GOP opposition and make the bill law.

“Kamala’s clinching vote,” Biden told the audience, “made this possible.”

He added that Harris “will be a hell of a president.”

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Biden took on his own efforts to stop rising food pricesincluding the creation of a “competition council” aimed at cutting costs by increasing competition in the meat industry, part of a broader effort to show that his administration was trying fight inflation.

Asked Thursday if he was concerned Harris would seek to distance herself from his economic record, Biden told reporters: “She won’t do that.”

Americans are more likely to trust Trump than Harris to manage the economy, but the difference is petite: 45% say Trump is better equipped to manage the economy, while 38% say the same of Harris. About 1 in 10 trust neither Harris nor Trump to manage the economy better, 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 that Harris was proposing “communist price controls” that would lead to shortages, hunger and more inflation, accompanying him with popular food items as he sought to draw attention to the rising cost of food.

Harris’ housing plan also wants to crack down on the data-sharing and pricing tools that landlords exploit to set rents and remove a tax incentive that has led investment firms to buy up vast swaths of the nation’s housing stock. She plans to pit her plan against Trump, who was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination five decades ago.

Consumer confidence surveys show that high prices remain a persistent source of frustration for shoppers, especially among lower-income Americans, even as inflation has cooled. Overall, prices are about 21% higher than they were before the pandemic. Median incomes have risen by slightly more, boosting spending even as Americans report a bleak economic outlook.

Some meat prices have risen even more than overall inflation: Beef prices have risen nearly 33% in the 4.5 years since the pandemic began, while chicken prices have jumped 31%. Pork is 21% more steep, according to government data.

One reason for the price boost was the disruption of supplies during the pandemic. Many meat processing plants Closed temporarily following outbreaks of COVID-19 among employees.

But the Biden administration has said corporate consolidation in the meat processing industry has played a larger role, allowing a petite number of companies to raise prices beyond their costs.

Four big companies control between 55% and 85% of the market for beef, chicken and poultry, the White House said in overdue 2021, including Tyson Foods and JBS. Several of the largest meat companies have collectively paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of fixing prices for chicken, beef and pork, but have not admitted any wrongdoing.

Some economists say big food and consumer goods companies have taken advantage of pandemic-era disruptions. Economist Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has called it “seller inflation.” Others have called it “greedflation.”

Harris’s price gouging proposals come as there is some evidence that “seller inflation” is waning. Consumers have become more discriminatory, and give up more steep purchases, looking for cheaper alternatives.

The government said on Wednesday that average grocery prices nationwide rose by just 1.1% over the past 12 months, matching pre-pandemic increases.

The meat industry has been grappling with accusations of overpricing and price fixing for years, with key players challenging the notion that extreme consolidation in the industry is the cause of high prices.

Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, said that “the cost of raising animals, the cost of processing them into meat and the cost of getting that meat to people is higher than it has been in the past.”

“Yes, consumers are seeing higher prices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being ripped off,” Tonsor said.

The head of trade group Meat Institute, president and CEO Julie Anna Potts, said Harris’ idea would not solve the problem of inflation, which is driving up the price of everything.

“Consumers have felt the effects of high inflationary prices on everything from services to rentals to cars, and not just at the grocery store,” Potts said. “A federal ban on price gouging doesn’t address the real causes of inflation.”