Axios claims Kamala Harris' attacks on price gouging aren't price controls—after admitting they are for Russian oil, UK groceries

Users of X took an Axios reporter to task Tuesday after she claimed Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t pushing price controls but instead promoting “price gouging bans.” Readers noted that the same reporter, Emily Peck, had called it price controls when the United Kingdom tried it or when Russia fixed the price of oil.

"The same author called it ‘price controls’ when the UK proposed voluntary caps on grocery store profits," part of the X Community Note stated on Tuesday. 

Harris promised last week to institute price controls that she said would stop “gouging on food and groceries" and prevent "big corporations" from exploiting consumers. In the same address on Democratic fiscal strategy, Harris announced a Trudeau-style housing program that critics say would reflect the ghettos of the Great Society or Soviet bloc housing.

Even mainstream media outlets dismissed Harris’ economic proposals as reminiscent of “Soviet” programs or as “gimmicks.”

The headline for Peck’s piece on “price gouging,” as written on X, was, "Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work." Peck insisted Harris wasn’t following the Soviet Union’s economic paradigm but merely following US laws.

"If banning price gouging is communist, then the US went Marxist long ago. Most of us live in states that already have bans in place," Peck wrote, though, as her reporting noted, these laws only "prohibit companies from jacking up prices during emergencies."

X users noted that Peck has been inconsistent about what she labels price controls. In a 2023 article, she said that was what the then-Conservative government of Britain was doing with its economy.

She wrote, "The UK is mulling voluntary price controls on essential food items, as the country grapples with sky-high inflation at the grocery store. Why it matters: Persistent inflation is changing the conversation around price controls. Once waved off as an affront to capitalism, they're starting to look more appealing — especially to politicians who want to avoid headlines about people who can't afford to eat."

Another fact check countered that "Axios called it ‘price controls’ when it was proposed to limit how much Russia could profit off oil in a time of crisis." There was a link to that story: "Price controls were largely abandoned after the '70s, as both American and global policy shifted toward less government involvement in the economy."