Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout, who worked on consumer pricing issues at the New York Attorney General’s office, told NBC News that Vice President Kamala Harris’s call for a federal ban on food price gouging would help bridge gaps in the patchwork of state measures.
In March 2020, Trump himself issued an executive order to head off corporate price gouging and the hoarding of “necessary health and medical resources,” like personal protective equipment and sanitizing products. That move, under the Defense Production Act, ordered the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to police any pandemic-related corporate malfeasance, including stockpiling “unnecessary quantities of items for the purpose of selling them above the fair market value.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“This is not a blue state, red state issue at all,” said Zephyr Teachout, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law and senior counsel for economic justice in the New York state Attorney General’s office, which proposed its own price-gouging curbs in March 2023. Teachout, an antitrust expert and a consumer advocate who has run unsuccessfully for several statewide offices as a Democrat, said a federal law would help bridge some gaps in the patchwork of state measures.
“The limits of these state laws are that they are effective on small-time operators but not effective against big multinationals, which can play with their accounting so as to avoid the state laws and operate in multiple states,” she said.
Harris’ plan could help “stop the big-shot scofflaws,” Teachout said.