(DCNF)—Vice President Kamala Harris recently rolled out a proposal to tackle food prices, framing it as a response to “price gouging” by grocery stores and producers. This proposal is not just flawed, it is a classic example of overreach by the left that seems more interested in expanding bureaucratic control than addressing the real issues.
Harris’ plan to implement price controls not only reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of economic principles but will intensify the financial strain on American families, driving the final nail into the coffin of the Biden-Harris administration’s failed economy.
The left claims that grocery stores are deliberately keeping prices high to pad their profits. I have had the privilege of working with all types of grocers throughout my career – from the largest corporate chains to small, family-owned businesses. I know price gouging is not what is driving the rise in food costs. Prices are set based on a complex mix of factors, including supply chain disruptions, labor costs and market demand — elements that the government cannot and should not control. This industry operates on razor-thin profit margins, and the spike in prices is a direct result of the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policies, which have affected supply chains and fueled inflation, making it harder for grocers to keep costs down for American families.
Rather than acknowledging the role their own economic mismanagement has played in driving up costs, they are scapegoating businesses that are simply trying to navigate a challenging market environment.
The idea of enacting a federal ban on price gouging may sound appealing to some, but it is actually gaslighting that will lead to unintended consequences, like food shortages. Rather than making things better for consumers, this plan would force companies to reduce supply or withdraw from certain markets altogether to avoid punitive actions by the federal government. Harris’ proposal risks creating more problems than it solves, potentially making grocery bills even higher for the very families she claims to be helping.
History shows that such controls do not work. Unable to cover the costs, producers may reduce production or close entirely. The inevitable result is empty shelves, long lines and even black markets for necessities – a scenario that has played out in many countries that have attempted similar policies.
Take Venezuela, for example. Once the wealthiest nation in Latin America, it is now a shadow of its former self, devastated by socialist policies like price controls. The government’s attempts to cap food prices led to severe shortages, driving millions to flee the country in search of necessities. Similarly, Argentina’s experience with price controls has resulted in rampant inflation and a thriving black market. Harris is willing to risk dragging America down this same dangerous path.
But the proposal isn’t just economically disastrous – it is an affront to American values. The United States was built on the principles of free markets and individual liberty. This plan would place control over what Americans can buy and at what price in the hands of government bureaucrats, which is a step more in line with authoritarian regimes than with the American way of life.
Moreover, this initiative would hit small businesses and farmers — especially in Hispanic communities — particularly hard. These small, family-owned grocery stores and local farmers, already operating on razor-thin margins, would be forced to sell at a loss under price controls, pushing many out of business. The result? Large multinational corporations would dominate the market, further eroding the local economies that are the backbone of our nation.
We must also consider the effect on food quality. Government-set prices give producers little incentive to maintain high standards, leading to a decline in quality. In places like Panama and Puerto Rico, price controls have led to an influx of low-quality imports, driving local producers out of business and reducing the quality of available food. If this plan is implemented, Americans could face the choice between low-quality, mass-produced goods and nothing at all.
Kamala Harris’ proposal is not a solution — it is a smokescreen designed to distract from the real causes of rising prices. The proposal faced significant backlash as soon as she announced it. It was also notably absent from her speech at the Democratic National Convention, which raises questions about the viability and public support for her plans. It is a dangerous step toward economic ruin and a direct assault on the freedoms that define our nation.
Instead of more government intervention, American families need a return to America First policies that promote economic growth, competition and innovation – principles that have always been at the heart of a strong, prosperous America. We must unleash American energy to bring down production and transportation costs, cut regulations so people can run their businesses more effectively, and reduce federal spending.
The American people, especially the hardworking Hispanic community, deserve better than to be pawns in the progressive agenda. It is time to resist this attack on our economy, defend the values that have made our country strong and protect the principles that make America great.
Bob Unanue serves as a board member for the America First Policy Institute and chairman of the Hispanic Leadership Coalition. He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Goya Foods and Goya Cares and served as the executive producer of the movie Sound of Freedom.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
