C4FE Economic Insights #9
The Center for Free Enterprise's latest Economic Insight is out. Karla Hernández discusses “Price Controls: An Economic Policy Trap in U.S. Politics.”
On August 16 in Raleigh, NC, Kamala Harris laid out a controversial but popular part of her economic agenda. Harris’ economic agenda proposed a reenactment of some price controls, including national rent control and empowering the federal government to ban corporate price gouging for high grocery prices. While Harris targets rent and price controls, more recently, Donald Trump echoed similar price control proposals, by suggesting a temporary federal cap on credit card interest rates at rally in New York last Thursday.
The recent post-COVID inflation led to a growing support for price control policies among both politicians and voters. A recent YouGov poll commissioned by Blueprint, found that five of the top ten policies by net support involved direct price controls or extending government power to affect prices. Such laws might be popular, but it would have no impact on grocery prices, deny financial resources to families dealing with price hikes, and might even make overall prices worse in the United States.
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