By Filip Timotija - 08/17/24

Former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, commended Vice President Kamala Harris for her newly outlined economic plan targeting big monopolies.

“I think it’s a very important plan, because what Kamala Harris is doing, building upon the very important work that was done by [President] Joe Biden, is to attack the source, one of the most important sources of high prices, and that is monopoly power,” Reich told NBC News’ Valerie Castro Friday on “NBC News Now.”

Harris, the current presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled her economic plan at a rally in North Carolina on Friday. She promoted economic proposals her campaign revealed this week. Some of the proposals include having a federal ban on price gouging. It would push state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to probe how corporations exploit consumers by lifting prices to boost profits.

Another proposal Harris’s team revealed is a plan to deal with the housing shortage by constructing new units and aiding first-time homebuyers with down payments. The vice president’s campaign hopes to restore and expand the child tax credit.

“A lot of big corporations in America have had record profits because they don’t compete very hard,” he said. “They’re very, very few competitors, and therefore they don’t have to reduce their prices. And who ends up holding the bag, who ends up paying high prices? Well, obviously, consumers.”

Former President Trump’s campaign criticized Harris’s economic proposals, trying to tie them to socialist policies of Venezuela and Cuba and saying they would not lower the cost for consumers around the country. The campaign was going after the ban on price gouging, stating it equals government-imposed price controls.

Reich, now a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of Berkley, defended Harris’s measures during his appearance on “NBC News Now,” stating that there is a “huge” difference between price controls and making the market “competitive.”

“In fact, this is the opposite of price controls,” Reich said. “When big corporations have the kind of power they have over prices, they control prices. When you have more competition, when you get rid of monopolies, you actually force companies to do what capitalism is supposed to force them to do, and that is compete.”