Former George W. Bush administration official Karl Rove said Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris gave former President Donald Trump a “wonderful opportunity” by calling for price controls.

Harris introduced the proposal, which would reportedly allow the Federal Trade Commission to impose “harsh penalties” for “price gouging” by grocery stores during a Friday speech in North Carolina that drew criticism from The Washington Post’s editorial board and columnist Catherine Rampell. Rove called Harris’ price controls a “populist gimmick” and also criticized her proposal to increase the corporate income tax rate to 28%.

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“It makes us uncompetitive, talk about creating jobs, let’s make it more difficult for American businesses to compete with people around the world who tax their corporations at zero, 15, 20, 25%. Let’s raise our tax rates higher,” Rove told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. “I mean, the great thing about the past couple of days is that economic speech by the vice president was an utter unmitigated disaster.”

“Price controls, I mean, when you lose the editorial board of The Washington Post as a Democrat, who says it is populist gimmickry, you’re in trouble, and this would have been a wonderful opportunity for [Trump],” Rove continued.

Since Harris and President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, prices have risen by over 20%, with the inflation rate hitting a high under Biden of 9% in June 2022. On the economy, Biden’s average approval rating in recent polls was only 38.6%, according to the RealClearPolitics average, while only 34.5% approved of his handling of inflation.

“It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is,” Rampell wrote in an op-ed posted Thursday evening. “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.”

Trump trails Harris by 1.5% in a national head-to-head matchup, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls from July 31 to Aug. 18, with Harris’ lead remaining at 1.5% when independent candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein are included.

Featured Image Credit: Jay Godwin