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Harris Now Has an Economic Plan. Can It Best Trump’s Promises?

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A central question in the final stretch of the election is if Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposals will cohere into an economic argument that can top former President Donald J. Trump’s.Vice President Kamala Harris has a plan for the economy: a glossy, 82-page booklet detailing proposals on housing, taxes and health care that her campaign handed out to supporters gathered at a campaign event in Pittsburgh this week.Former President Donald J. Trump has nothing so detailed. The issues section of his campaign website is spare. He has coughed up a string of four- or five-word slogans promising tax cuts, some of which even his advisers cannot fully explain. He has toyed with a tariff as high as 20 percent on every good imported into the United States, promised to deport millions of immigrants to reduce the demand for housing and boasted that he can halve energy prices in a year.Even with such an improvisational, loosely defined agenda, he is still leading Ms. Harris on the economy in polls, though his advantage is shrinking in some surveys. Many economists have warned that Mr. Trump’s promises, if turned into concrete policy, could slow growth, raise consumer prices and balloon the federal deficit.But many voters find Mr. Trump’s punchy promises easy to grasp. His basic message of lower taxes, less regulation and less trade with other countries helped carry him to the White House once before. A majority of Americans fondly remember the economy in the first three years of his administration, before the pandemic and years of elevated inflation.A central question in the final stretch of the presidential race is if Ms. Harris’s more detailed — but in many cases still not fully formed — stack of policy proposals will cohere into an economic argument that can top that.To a remarkable degree in a deeply polarized country, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump have many of the same stated goals for the economy. Lower costs. Reduce regulations. Cut taxes for the middle class. Incentivize corporations to build their products in the United States.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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    Harris Economic Plan Focuses on Prices, a Key Vulnerability

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    Vice President Kamala Harris has been balancing the challenges of defending “Bidenomics” and charting her own course on the economy.As Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her economic plans in recent weeks, former President Donald J. Trump has accused her of being a Marxist, a communist and a socialist.When they meet on Tuesday night for their only scheduled presidential debate, Ms. Harris will have the opportunity to rebut those claims and confront Mr. Trump about his record of managing the U.S. economy.She will also lay out her vision, which has been challenging as she tries to defend “Bidenomics” and demonstrate that she has a plan to chart a new course amid widespread economic discontent among many Americans who are struggling with high prices and other affordability issues.In a compressed presidential campaign, Ms. Harris indicated that she would continue many of President Biden’s policies, which aim to raise taxes on companies and punish them for price gouging, while also trying to strike a more business-friendly tone. In some cases, such as her embrace of ending taxation of tips, the vice president has even shown a willingness to adopt the policies put forward by Mr. Trump.How Ms. Harris would ultimately govern if elected will depend largely on the makeup of Congress, but her initial suite of proposals — from taxes to trade to child care — suggests that she would take the economy in a vastly different direction than her Republican opponent.Cost of LivingPerhaps Ms. Harris’s biggest political vulnerability is the run-up in prices that occurred during the Biden administration. Mr. Trump has repeatedly blamed the vice president for causing inflation to surge after the coronavirus pandemic, a phenomenon that stemmed from a mix of factors such as supply chain issues, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and repeated bursts of fiscal stimulus to keep families and businesses afloat. The higher cost of goods initially hurt Mr. Biden when he was running against Mr. Trump, and Ms. Harris is now facing many of the same concerns from Americans who are feeling negative about a relatively strong economy.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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    Harris’s Price-Gouging Ban: Price Controls or No Quick Effect?

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    The plan does not appear to amount to government price controls. It also might not bring down grocery bills anytime soon.Vice President Kamala Harris threw her support behind a federal ban on price-gouging in the food and grocery industries last week. It was the first official economic policy proposal of her presidential campaign, and it was pitched as a direct response to the high price of putting food on the table in America today.“To combat high grocery costs, VP Harris to call for first-ever federal ban on corporate price-gouging,” the Harris campaign proclaimed in the subject line of a news release last week, ahead of a speech laying out the first planks of her economic agenda.It is still impossible to say, from publicly available details, what exactly the ban would do. Republicans have denounced the proposal as “communist,” warning that it would lead to the federal government setting prices in the marketplace. Former President Donald J. Trump has mocked the plan on social media as “SOVIET Style Price Controls.”Progressives have cheered the announcement as a crucial check on corporate greed, saying it could immediately benefit shoppers who have been stunned by a 20 percent rise in food costs since President Biden took office.But people familiar with Ms. Harris’s thinking on the ban now say it might not resemble either of those characterizations. The ban, they also suggest, might actually not do anything to bring down grocery prices right now. Those who spoke about the strategy behind the emerging policy did so on the condition of anonymity.Ms. Harris’s campaign has created the space for multiple interpretations, by declining to specify how that ban would work, when it would apply or what behaviors it would prohibit.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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    Harris and Trump Offer a Clear Contrast on the Economy

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    Both candidates embrace expansions of government power to steer economic outcomes — but in vastly different areas.Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump flew to North Carolina this week to deliver what were billed as major speeches on the economy. Neither laid out a comprehensive policy plan — not Ms. Harris in her half-hour focus on housing, groceries and prescription drugs, nor Mr. Trump in 80 minutes of sprinkling various proposals among musings about dangerous immigrants.But in their own ways, both candidates sent voters clear and important messages about their economic visions. Each embraced a vision of a powerful federal government, using its muscle to intervene in markets in pursuit of a stronger and more prosperous economy.They just disagreed, almost entirely, on when and how that power should be used.In Raleigh on Friday, Ms. Harris began to put her own stamp on the brand of progressive economics that has come to dominate Democratic politics over the last decade. That economic thinking embraces the idea that the federal government must act aggressively to foster competition and correct distortions in private markets.The approach seeks large tax increases on corporations and high earners, to fund assistance for low-income and middle-class workers who are struggling to build wealth for themselves and their children. At the same time, it provides big tax breaks to companies engaged in what Ms. Harris and other progressives see as delivering great economic benefit — like manufacturing technologies needed to fight global warming, or building affordable housing.That philosophy animated the policy agenda that Ms. Harris unveiled on Friday. She pledged to send up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance to every first-time home buyer over four years, while directing $40 billion to construction companies that build starter homes. She said she would permanently reinstate an expanded child tax credit that President Biden temporarily established with his 2021 stimulus law, while offering even more assistance to parents of newborns.She called for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries and for new federal enforcement tools to punish companies that unfairly push up food prices. “My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules,” she said, adding: “We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy.”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 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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    Harris Will Back Federal Ban on Price Gouging, Campaign Says

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    Vice President Kamala Harris will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries in a speech laying out her economic agenda on Friday, campaign officials said late Wednesday, in an effort to blame big companies for persistently high costs of American consumer staples.The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.It also follows through on what people familiar with Ms. Harris’s forthcoming economic agenda said this week would be a centerpiece of her plans: an aggressive rhetorical attempt to shift the blame for high inflation onto corporate America. Polls show that argument resonates strongly with voters, including independent voters who could decide the November election.Progressive groups have urged President Biden, and now Ms. Harris, to fully embrace that argument.In a release announcing the policy, Harris campaign officials did not detail how a price-gouging ban would be enforced or what current corporate behaviors would be outlawed if it were enacted. They said Ms. Harris would work in her first 100 days to put in place a federal ban “setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”The officials also said Ms. Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” on corporations that fix prices. They said that she would direct more resources toward investigating price-gouging in the supply chain for meat and that she would push federal officials to closely scrutinize proposed grocery mergers.They also said that Ms. Harris would unveil plans on Friday related to housing costs and prescription drug prices. Many states ban price gouging, but the federal government does not.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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    Biden Targets a New Economic Villain: Shrinkflation

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    Liberals prodded the president for years to blame big corporations for price increases. He is finally doing so, in the grocery aisle.On Super Bowl Sunday, the White House released a short video in which a smiling President Biden, sitting next to a table stocked with chips, cookies and sports drinks, slammed companies for reducing the package size and portions of popular foods without an accompanying reduction in price.“I’ve had enough of what they call shrinkflation,” Mr. Biden declared.The video lit up social media and delighted a consumer advocate named Edgar Dworsky, who has studied “shrinkflation” trends for more than a decade. He has twice briefed Mr. Biden’s economic aides, first in early 2023 and again a few days before the video aired. The first briefing seemed to lead nowhere. The second clearly informed Mr. Biden’s new favorite economic argument — that companies have used a rapid run-up in prices to pad their pockets by keeping those prices high while giving consumers less.The products arrayed in the president’s video, like Oreos and Wheat Thins, were all examples of the shrinkflation that Mr. Dworsky had documented on his Consumer World website.While inflation is moderating, shoppers remain furious over the high price of groceries. Mr. Biden, who has seen his approval ratings suffer amid rising prices, has found a blame-shifting message he loves in the midst of his re-election campaign: skewering companies for shrinking the size of candy bars, ice cream cartons and other food items, while raising prices or holding them steady, even as the companies’ profit margins remain high.The president has begun accusing companies of “ripping off” Americans with those tactics and is considering new executive actions to crack down on the practice, administration officials and other allies say, though they will not specify the steps he might take. He is also likely to criticize shrinkflation during his State of the Union address next week.Mr. Biden could also embrace new legislation seeking to empower the Federal Trade Commission to more aggressively investigate and punish corporate price gouging, including in grocery stories.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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    Fed Minutes Show Embrace of Inflation Progress but No Hurry to Cut Rates

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    Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 30-31 meeting showed policymakers thought that risks of an inflation pickup had “diminished.”Federal Reserve officials welcomed a recent inflation slowdown at their last meeting in late January but were intent on proceeding carefully as they tiptoe toward rate cuts, according to minutes from that gathering, which were released on Wednesday.Central bankers raised interest rates sharply from March 2022 to July 2023, pushing them to 5.3 percent from a starting point near zero. Those moves were meant to cool consumer and business demand, which officials hoped would weigh down rapid inflation.Now, inflation is slowing meaningfully. Consumer prices climbed 3.1 percent in the year through January, down sharply from their recent peak of 9.1 percent. But that is still faster than the pace that was normal before the pandemic, and it is above the central bank’s goal: The Fed aims for 2 percent inflation over time using a different but related metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index.The economy has continued to grow at a solid clip even as price growth has moderated. Hiring has remained stronger than expected, wage growth is chugging along and retail sales data have suggested that consumers are still willing to spend.That combination leaves Fed officials contemplating when — and how much — to lower interest rates. While central bankers have been clear that they do not think they need to raise borrowing costs further at a time when inflation is moderating, they have also suggested that they are in no hurry to cut rates.“There had been significant progress recently on inflation returning to the committee’s longer-run goal,” Fed officials reiterated in their freshly released minutes. Officials thought that cooler rent prices, improving labor supply and productivity gains could all help inflation to moderate further this year. Policymakers also suggested that “upside risks to inflation” had “diminished” — suggesting that they are becoming more confident that inflation is coming down sustainably.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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    New Inflation Developments Are Rattling Markets and Economists. Here’s Why.

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    Inflation is less about pandemic and war surprises and more about economic momentum. That could make the solution more painful.When inflation began to accelerate in 2021, price pressures were clearly tied to the pandemic: Companies couldn’t produce cars, couches and computer games fast enough to keep up with demand from homebound consumers amid supply chain disruptions.This year, Russia’s war in Ukraine sent fuel and food prices rocketing, exacerbating price pressures.But now, as those sources of inflation show early signs of fading, the question is how much overall price increases will abate. And the answer is likely to be driven in part by what happens in one crucial area: the labor market.Federal Reserve officials are laser-focused on job gains and wage growth as they quickly raise interest rates to constrain the economy and slow rapid price increases. Officials are convinced that they must sap the economy of some of its momentum to wrestle the worst inflation in four decades back down to their goal of 2 percent.The way they do that is by slowing spending, hiring and wage gains — and they do that by raising the costs of borrowing. So far, a pronounced cool-down is proving elusive, suggesting to economists and investors that the central bank may need to be even more aggressive in its efforts to temper growth and bring inflation back down.As data this week showed, prices continue to soar. And, while the job market has moderated somewhat, employers are still hiring at a solid clip and raising wages at the fastest pace in decades. That continued progress seems to be allowing consumers to keep spending, and it may give employers both the power and the motivation to increase their prices to cover their climbing labor costs.As inflationary forces chug along, economists said, the risk is rising that the Fed will clamp down on the economy so hard that America will be in for a rough landing — potentially one in which growth slumps and unemployment shoots higher.It is becoming more likely “that it won’t be possible to wring inflation out of this economy without a proper recession and higher unemployment,” said Krishna Guha, who heads the global policy and central bank strategy team at Evercore ISI and who has been forecasting that the Fed can cool inflation without causing an outright recession.Rising wages could become a more primary driver of higher prices.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe challenge for the Fed is that, more and more, price increases appear to be driven by long-lasting factors tied to the underlying economy, and less by one-off factors caused by the pandemic or the war in Ukraine.Consumer Price Index data from August released on Tuesday illustrated that point. Gas prices dropped sharply last month, which many economists expected would pull overall inflation down. They also thought that recent improvements in the supply chain would moderate price increases for goods. Used car costs, a major contributor to inflation last year, are now declining.Yet, in spite of those positive developments, quickly rising costs across a wide array of products and services helped to push prices higher on a monthly basis. Rent, furniture, meals at restaurants and visits to the dentist are all growing more expensive. Inflation climbed 8.3 percent on an annual basis, and picked up by 0.1 percent from the prior month.The data underscored that, even without extraordinary disruptions, so many products and services are now increasing in price that costs might continue ratcheting up. Core inflation, which strips out food and fuel costs to give a sense of underlying price trends, reaccelerated to 6.3 percent in August after easing to 5.9 percent in July.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More