As Vice President Kamala Harris targets grocery stores for driving up the cost of living, her fellow Democrats are accepting ever larger donations from political action committees funded by America’s biggest grocers.
Harris has promised to crack down on price gouging at grocery stores as part of her efforts to contain the political liability of inflation which surged to 4-decade highs during her time in the White House as Joe Biden‘s Vice President.
“As president, I will take on the high costs that matter most to most Americans, like the cost of food,” Harris said earlier this month at a rally in North Carolina. “We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down and failed. But our supply chains have improved, and prices are still too high.”
The proposal has brought accusations that Harris is planning Communist-style price controls from Donald Trump. Even Democrats on the Hill have quietly played down its seriousness.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), food prices rose 25% between 2019 and 2023. A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study showed food prices for U.S. consumers rose 11% between 2021 and 2022, while profits for food retailers went up more than 6%.
The Harris campaign claims that many large grocery chains have kept prices high despite stable production costs, leading to their highest profits in 20 years. That fails to take into account that grocery stores tend to have razor-thin profit margins, typically between 1-3%, far lower than other retail sectors.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) data published by Reuters shows that at least 154 Democratic lawmakers or their fundraising organizations have accepted contributions from top food companies during the current campaign cycle.
According to the FEC, Walmart has donated $441,500 to congressional Democrats this cycle, while Kroger’s and Albertsons’ PACs have given $185,000 through June 2024. Overall, according to the FEC, 58% of Kroger’s and Albertsons’ combined donations went to Republican congressional campaigns this cycle.
The FEC data also shows that 51 congressional Democrats have accepted that campaign cash while publicly blasting the grocery industry.
Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin—each involved in contentious U.S. Senate races—are among the Democrats who have criticized major food and consumer product companies while also accepting their donations.
Casey, for example, has taken on the brands of Mondelez International and Proctor & Gamble for stoking so-called “greedflation.” But his campaign, according to Reuters, accepted $1,000 donations from PACs for both companies, which supply Kroger and Albertsons, along with a host of other grocery retailers.
Casey’s campaign asserted that his criticism of Mondelez and Proctor & Gamble proves his political independence from donors.
“Bob Casey is an independent fighter who will always stand up for working people against corporate greed and companies ripping off Pennsylvanians,” a campaign spokesperson told Reuters.
Newsweek emailed the Harris, Brown, Casey and Baldwin campaigns for comment Sunday morning.
Activists say lawmakers should realize that accepting those donations may come with strings attached, especially when an issue emerges as a campaign talking point.
“Large corporations like this don’t just give money to elected officials for their health, they do it to expect some type of return,” Morgan Harper, policy director at Fight Corporate Monopolies, told Reuters. “That return can often be in trying to stop the wheels of government from moving to enforce the law against them.”
Of note, Kroger is the biggest grocer by revenue in the U.S. and has proposed a $24.6-billion merger with Albertsons. The FTC will challenge the deal in an Oregon federal court, beginning Monday, arguing the merger is detrimental for shoppers and workers.
The economy has become a key issue for voters as Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, aim to address the issue. Trump’s economic agenda includes an expansion of his stance on tariffs on foreign countries, which has also faced wide criticism.
The former president has criticized Harris’ proposal, likening it to “Maduro-esque price controls” that have crippled the Venezuelan economy.
While Harris wants Congress to pass the first-ever federal ban on alleged price-gouging among the food and grocery sectors, even if Democrats win the White House and Congress this November, some in the party are reportedly telling allies that the proposal doesn’t have a chance.
According to Politico, which spoke with six Democratic lawmakers and five Democratic aides, Democrats in Congress don’t see the Harris plan as viable. Instead, it is viewed as an acknowledgement to voters of the overall issues surrounding rising food prices. It is also reportedly seen as a way for the Harris campaign to reach out to progressives and deflect voter anger about inflation from the executive branch to large corporations.
“It’s clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals,” one of the Democratic lawmakers told Politico.
In an interview appearance last week on NBC News’ Meet The Press, Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was asked by host Kristen Welker if Harris’ plan to ban price-gouging is “anything more than a gimmick?” a reference to The Washington Post’s editorial board’s criticism of the plan.
According to the Post’s opinion column, Harris was being “less forthright” with voters about the reasons why prices remain high, adding that the vice president “squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.”
“I think it speaks to Kamala Harris’ values that she wants consumers to keep more money in their pockets…We know we got to have business growth in this country…We also know that you can’t gouge and hurt the American consumer to pad your bottom line and I think there is a balance there,” Whitmer said.
Continuing to push, Welker asked, “So you think it’s a smart policy?”
Whitmer responded that she thinks that “any effort we make to keep more money in Americans’ pockets is worth walking the path.”
The National Grocers Association, which represents the retail and wholesale grocers that comprise the independent sector of the food distribution industry, blasted Harris’ plan as “a solution in search of a problem.”
“Rather than proposing new legislation far-off in the future,” the federal government should focus on enforcing antitrust laws already on the books, the group said in a statement this week.
One food industry official quoted anonymously by Politico also called the proposal an “effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.”
“I’m sure it polls well,” the person said.
Republican strategist Matt Klink recently told Newsweek that Democrats “missed a huge opportunity to discuss pocketbook issues during last week’s national convention, specifically to highlight to consumers how they will focus on lowering prices.”
“Doing so won’t occur by going after grocery stores and ‘evil’ corporations. Proving price gouging is extremely difficult to prove and rarely occurs,” he said, referring to Harris’ policy.
