Economic commentator warns Harris' price control plan already tried in 'Venezuela, Argentina, Soviet Union'

A liberal economic columnist criticized Vice President Kamala Harris' proposal to control prices on food and groceries as "totally unworkable" and compared it to failed efforts by communist governments.

"It‘s not going to be markets, it‘s not going to be supply and demand that’s determining how much your grocery store charges you for milk or for eggs, it‘s going to be some bureaucrat in D.C., which seems like totally unworkable," Catherine Rampell said on CNN on Friday.

Rampell, a columnist for the Washington Post and a CNN economics and political commentator, argued the plan was "bad" for various reasons, from practicality to effectiveness.

"Well, first of all, nobody can explain what price gouging means," she said on CNN, saying the idea of "excessive" prices or profit margins is subjective and thus "very hard to pin down what this would actually mean."

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She also blasted Democratic legislation that would "likely be the template" for Harris' policy proposal as "especially bad."

"If you look at the legislation that, as I mentioned, is already in the Senate, led by Senator Warren and Senator Bob Casey and a slew of others, the particular way that this is written, which is likely to be the template for any proposal that Harris would eventually embrace, is especially bad in that it just bans excessive prices, grossly excessive prices, grossly excessive profit margins, and says that the Federal Trade Commission can use any the metric it deems appropriate to decide what that — what that would mean," she said, knocking the idea of "the FTC to be deciding, like, how much Kroger charges for eggs in Michigan."

Furthermore, she argued, the plan would be "very bad for markets," and could lead down the same failed path as socialist and communist governments.

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"We’ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before; Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, et cetera. It leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, you know, plenty of uncertainty," she said.

"And beyond that, the specific way this bill is written might actually increase prices because of some of the other language in it, things like requiring companies — public companies to disclose in their quarterly reports, their quarterly earnings reports, how they’re setting prices, which is a great way to help them collude, which normally we don’t want them to do," she explained.

Rampell predicted any legislation that preserved Harris' proposal to "at best do nothing, at worst cause a lot of harm."

The Harris campaign did not immediately return a request for comment to Fox News Digital.

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The Harris campaign first announced the federal price-fixing plan for corporations on Wednesday, saying Harris would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to impose "harsh penalties" on companies that set excessively high prices on food and groceries.

The news was treated skeptically by some left-leaning economists and financial experts, including Rampell, who wrote a scathing op-ed in the Post on Thursday.

"It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk," Rampell wrote.