Presidential Election of 2024

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    Kamala Harris Blames ‘Price Gouging’ for Grocery Inflation. Here’s What Economists Say.

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    Price increases when demand exceeds supply are textbook economics. The question is whether, and how much, the pandemic yielded an excess take.In detailing her presidential campaign’s economic agenda, Vice President Kamala Harris will highlight an argument that blames corporate price gouging for high grocery prices.That message polls well with swing voters. It has been embraced by progressive groups, which regularly point to price gouging as a driver of rapid inflation, or at least something that contributes to rapid price increases. Those groups cheered the announcement late Wednesday that Ms. Harris will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries in an economic policy speech on Friday.But the economic argument over the issue is complicated.Economists have cited a range of forces for pushing up prices in the recovery from the pandemic recession, including snarled supply chains, a sudden shift in consumer buying patterns, and the increased customer demand fueled by stimulus from the government and low rates from the Federal Reserve. Most economists say those forces are far more responsible than corporate behavior for the rise in prices in that period.Biden administration economists have found that corporate behavior has played a role in pushing up grocery costs in recent years — but that other factors have played a much larger one.The Harris campaign announcement cited meat industry consolidation as a driver of excessive grocery prices, but officials did not immediately respond on Thursday to questions about the evidence Ms. Harris would cite or how her proposal would work.There are examples of companies telling investors in recent years that they have been able to raise prices to increase profits. But even the term “price gouging” means different things to different people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kamala Harris Set to Lay Out Economic Agenda in North Carolina Speech

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    Vice President Kamala Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has generated a host of questions about her economic agenda, including how much she will stick to the details of President Biden’s positions, tweak them, or chart entirely new ones.When she begins to roll out her policy vision this week, Ms. Harris is likely to answer only some of those questions.During an economy-focused speech on Friday in Raleigh, N.C., Ms. Harris will outline a sort of reboot of the administration’s economic agenda, according to four people familiar with Ms. Harris’s plans.She will lay out an approach relatively light on details, they said. It will shift emphasis from Mr. Biden’s focus on job creation and made-in-America manufacturing, and toward efforts to rein in the cost of living. But it will rarely break from Mr. Biden on substance.That strategy reflects the advice economic aides have given Ms. Harris: to be clear and bold in talking about the economy, but not overly specific.Her ability to do that has been effectively enabled by the unusual circumstances of Mr. Biden’s abrupt departure from the presidential race, which allowed Ms. Harris to secure the Democratic nomination without enduring a long primary campaign.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Food Prices Have Changed During the Biden Administration

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    Grocery prices are no longer rising as rapidly, but food inflation remains a top issue for voters, polls show.A central issue has plagued the Biden administration for most of its term: the steep rise in grocery prices.Polls have consistently found that inflation remains a top concern for voters, who have seen their budgets squeezed. A YouGov poll published last month found that 64 percent of Americans said inflation was a “very serious problem.” And when it comes to inflation, several surveys suggested that Americans were most concerned about grocery prices.Despite the gloom about grocery costs, food price increases have generally been cooling for months. On Wednesday, new data on inflation for July will show if the trend has continued.Economists in a Bloomberg survey think that inflation overall probably climbed by 3 percent from a year earlier, in line with a 3 percent rise in June. That sort of reading would probably keep officials at the Federal Reserve on track to cut interest rates in September. Investors, who were recently rattled by signs of an economic slowdown, have looked to rate cuts as a support for markets.Some voters have blamed President Biden for rising prices, pointing out that food costs have soared over the past four years. Former President Donald J. Trump, when accepting the Republican nomination last month, highlighted grocery costs and said that he would “make America affordable again.”In the year through June, grocery prices rose 1.1 percent, a significant slowdown from a recent peak of 13.5 percent in August 2022. Many consumers might not be feeling relief, though, because food prices overall have not fallen but have continued to increase, albeit at a slower rate. Compared with four years ago, grocery prices are up about 20 percent.

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    Annual change in grocery prices for U.S. consumers
    Year-over-year change in average for “food at home” index, not seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    From Tips to TikTok, Trump Swaps Policies With Aim to Please Voters

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    The former president’s economic agenda has made some notable reversals from the policies he pushed while in the White House.At his convention speech last month, former President Donald J. Trump declared that his new economic agenda would be built around a plan to eliminate taxes on tips, claiming that the idea would uplift the middle class and provide relief to hospitality workers around the country.“Everybody loves it,” Mr. Trump said to cheers. “Waitresses and caddies and drivers.”While the cost and feasibility of the idea has been questioned by economists and tax analysts, labor experts have noted another irony: As president, Mr. Trump tried to take tips away from workers and give the money to their employers.The reversal is one of many that Mr. Trump has made in his bid to return to the presidency and underscores his malleability in election-year policymaking. From TikTok to cryptocurrencies, the former president has been reinventing his platform on the fly as he aims to attract different swaths of voters. At times, Mr. Trump appears to be staking out new positions to differentiate himself from Vice President Kamala Harris or, perhaps, just to please crowds.To close observers of the machinations of Mr. Trump’s first term, the shift on tips, a policy that has become a regular part of his stump speech, has been particularly striking.“Trump is posing as a champion of tipped restaurant workers with his no-tax-on-tips proposal, but his actual record has been to slash protections for tipped workers at a time when they were struggling with a high cost of living,” said Paul Sonn, the director of National Employment Law Project Action, which promotes workers’ rights.In 2017, Mr. Trump’s Labor Department proposed changing federal regulations to allow employers to collect tips that their workers receive and use them for essentially any purpose as long as the workers were paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In theory, the flexibility would make it possible for restaurant owners to ensure that cooks and dishwashers received part of a pool of tip money, but in practice employers could pocket the tips and spend them at their discretion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Suggests that President Should Have a ‘Say’ in Interest Rates

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    Donald J. Trump suggested presidents should have input on interest rates, a comment likely to stoke fears that he could try to limit the Federal Reserve’s political independence.Donald J. Trump suggested on Thursday that the president should have a say in setting interest rates — a comment that could rekindle fears that the Republican nominee might try to influence the politically independent Federal Reserve if he is re-elected to the White House.“I feel that the president should have at least say in there, yeah, I feel that strongly,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, referring to the rate-setting process. “I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve, or the chairman.”Mr. Trump made a habit of loudly criticizing Fed policy while he was in office, often personally attacking Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair.Mr. Trump elevated Mr. Powell to his leadership position, to which President Biden has since reappointed him. But Mr. Powell angered Mr. Trump by keeping interest rates higher than he would have preferred. Mr. Trump responded by calling the Fed chair and his colleagues “boneheads” and at another point asking in a social media post who was a bigger “enemy,” Mr. Powell or Xi Jinping, China’s president.Mr. Trump acknowledged that history of animosity on Thursday, saying that he “used to have it out with him.”While Mr. Trump flirted with the idea of firing Mr. Powell during his time in the Oval Office, it is not clear whether it would be legal to dismiss or demote a sitting Fed chair. In the end, Mr. Trump never tried it. Still, there have been big questions about what might await the Fed if Mr. Trump were to win re-election. Mr. Powell’s term as chair runs to mid-2026.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal

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    The most recent and costliest of Mr. Trump’s ideas would end income taxes on Social Security benefits.First it was a tax cut for hotel and restaurant workers in Nevada, a swing state where Donald J. Trump proposed exempting tips from taxes. Then, in front of powerful chief executives gathered in Washington, Mr. Trump floated cutting the corporate tax rate, helping to ease concerns in the business community about his candidacy.Now Mr. Trump is calling for an end to taxing Social Security benefits, which could be a boon for retirees, one of the most politically important groups in the United States.Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars.While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot. Nevada’s two Democratic senators and its powerful culinary union have endorsed ending taxes on tips. The AARP supports tax relief for seniors receiving Social Security benefits, though it has not taken a position on Mr. Trump’s proposal.“You do have to scratch your head a little bit when someone’s going around offering free lunches everywhere,” said Jesse Lee, a Democratic consultant and former Biden White House official. “We’re all for people having their lunch, but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.”The most recent and most expensive of Mr. Trump’s plans is ending income taxes on Social Security benefits, which could cost the federal government as much as $1.8 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would burn through the program’s financial reserves more quickly and hasten the moment when the government is no longer able to pay out Social Security benefits in full under current law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Vance Pioneered ‘New Right’ Economics. Trump May Not Embrace It.

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    The vice-presidential nominee favors economic policies that help advance a socially conservative vision of American society — and that sometimes clash with Trump’s own plans.Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, is a pioneer in what friends and critics alike call a new form of Republican economic thinking. It’s a vision to steer the economy toward advancing socially conservative goals, even when those policies defy conservative orthodoxy about government intervention in private markets.Those who know him well say Mr. Vance’s economic views have evolved to match his deepening commitment to social conservative causes, along with his growing anger at the role large companies play in shaping American society and politics.Mr. Vance has built his brief political career on that new brand of economic populism.He has championed efforts to reward families for having children, with tax breaks that some Republican economists say discourage people from working. He has also pushed to disempower large businesses, particularly tech companies that Mr. Vance and his allies say have used their market power to silence conservatives and hurt workers and children, through support for aggressive antitrust enforcement and even some corporate tax increases.“He’s a social conservative first,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington who has known Mr. Vance and discussed policy with him for years, well before he decided to enter politics.“The economic policy is in service of this broader social vision, where you don’t have to go to college to earn a middle-class wage,” Mr. Strain said. “Where your kids are safe from the tech companies. And where these big businesses, run by elites, are not a threat to local companies.”Since taking office in 2023, Mr. Vance has supported raising the minimum wage for people authorized to work in the United States, cast doubt on the virtues of corporate tax cuts and privately expressed admiration for some of the economic stances of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, whom he has joined to push legislation cracking down on big banks. He has also called Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair whose aggressive antitrust agenda has angered business groups and many Republicans, one of the few Biden administration officials who is doing a “pretty good job.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Promises Lower Interest Rates, but the President Doesn’t Control Those

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    The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, and it operates independently of the White House. But rates could come down as inflation cools.Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race, promised lower interest rates — which a president does not actually control — if he is elected.Asked on Wednesday what he would do on “Day 1” of a new presidency during a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, Mr. Trump said one priority would be to “drill, baby, drill,” the shorthand tagline he has adopted for promoting oil and gas production in the United States.“I bring energy way down, I bring, interest rates are down, I bring inflation way down,” Mr. Trump expanded.The president exerts no direct control over interest rates. The Federal Reserve sets a key policy rate, which then trickles out to influence borrowing costs across the economy, and the Fed is independent from the White House.Mr. Trump has at times implied that the Fed will lower rates because inflation is likely to be lower on his watch, which could have been what he meant on Wednesday. Economists have suggested that some of his proposed policies may in fact speed up inflation.Still, the candidate’s comments underscore how politically salient both price increases and high interest rates remain as the Nov. 5 election nears, even after years in which inflation has been gradually cooling. And they make it clear that the coming months are likely to be politically fraught for the Fed as the technocratic institution tries to stay outside the political fray.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More