Chicago grocery owner skeptical of Harris 'gouging' plan: 'What exactly are we trying to control?'

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Grocery owner challenges price control proposal: Harris’ plan vs actual cost of goods

Chris Dallas, who owns HarvesTime grocery in Chicago, told Fox News Digital that price controls can't be implemented on grocery store owners: 'What exactly are we trying to control?'

Local grocery store owners struggling with inflation might face price caps to curb "price gouging" if Vice President Harris becomes the next president. 

As part of Harris' economic agenda, she plans to implement federal price controls on groceries and other everyday expenses. But a local grocery store owner in Chicago – where the Democratic National Convention is underway – says he's not sure "what we're trying to control."

"Most of the grocers that I know and associate with are very conscious of having products that we're pricing things according to what we pay for them, not necessarily as to what the market bears," HarvesTime grocery store owner Hristos "Chris" Dallas told Fox News Digital in an interview Monday.

"It doesn't exactly go the same with other parts that affect the pricing, though. So, for example, we're standing in front of the refrigerator, and this refrigerator cost me more when I installed it a few years ago than the first store that I opened up in the entirety of the store," Dallas said. "So, what exactly are we trying to control?"

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Chris Dallas stands in front of produce at his grocery store, HarvesTime, in Chicago on day 1 of the DNC to discuss price controls. (Jamie Joseph/Fox News Digital)

The Harris campaign announced on Wednesday that she would institute a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries" as president in an attempt to stop "big corporations" from taking advantage of consumers. 

Critics have blasted the policy and have said such measures could lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, reflecting past distortions seen when countries have attempted to control prices by decree.

Dallas, a proponent of the "small mom-and-pops" against conglomerate takeover, questioned whether the issue of so-called "price gouging" is simply the difference between production costs and selling prices or if it includes all the factors involved in getting the product to market.

"A tomato, for example, that's grown in southwest Michigan – a few years ago there was a certain wage and there were employees to be had in order to do that job in picking. Today, we have to pay twice or three times more in order to get the same product. So, how can we say or where do we say that there is price gouging or natural price increase? So, I'm confused as to what would constitute gouging," said Dallas, who neither identified as a Republican nor a Democrat.

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A view inside United Center ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 15, 2024. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"Inflation always impacts, but politicians have a lot to do with inflation," he said, adding that former President Trump's policy proposal for across-the-board tariffs would also raise the cost of products abroad and make goods more expensive.

"I don't begrudge anybody for making a decent wage, but artificially increasing [the] minimum wage increases everybody's wage," he said. "So, when you have a product that's produced that it would take, for example, $3 labor costs to make it, the next thing you know is that $3 becomes $5 or $6 per item that's going to be affected, whether it's food or whether it's clothing or whatever have you, the end price is going to increase."

"If something goes higher [at] one end, it will affect something at a different end," he said.

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The young mother holds her daughter as she grocery shops. (iStock)

While Dallas said he's against price controls at the grocery store level, he added some level of price-control regulation may be necessary to prevent large grocery chains from stomping out small, independently owned stores in rural areas. 

"It's a battle that we fight every day," Dallas said of rising product costs.

Harris' price gouging proposal would give authority to the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to impose harsh penalties on companies for setting excessively high prices. Republican economists have criticized the move, calling it "Marxist" and "lunatic behavior." 

They also challenged the merits of Harris' claim that food and grocery providers are artificially inflating prices. 

"Actual consumer prices have been going up less than producer prices, which means that businesses, if anything, are price gouging themselves," Richard Stern, director of the Heritage Foundation's Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told Fox News Digital in a previous interview. 

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"If the prices are going up more than the cost of doing business, then [the consumer price index] would be going up faster than [the producer price index], and it's not." 

Harris' plan also includes efforts to remove tax benefits from Wall Street investors through a bill called the Stop Predatory Investing Act, aimed at curtailing predatory practices by major investors who acquire large numbers of single-family rental homes.

Fox News Digital's Jeffrey Clark and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.