Target CEO Brian Cornell blasted Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign for suggesting his store is price-gouging customers on groceries, CNBC reported. Harris has proposed a ban on the practice as part of her platform.
Last week, Harris said she would ban "corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries" if elected president in November. Cornell was asked about this practice in an interview on the network's "Squawk Box" Wednesday.
That position has blown up in her face now that Cornell disputed the premise of this claim and noted the company's slight profit margins as evidence. "We’re in a penny business," Cornell said.
Harris has a problem with her campaign as Americans feel the bite of inflation caused by President Joe Biden's administration. As his vice president, she is at least partly responsible for those policies and could begin to change things now.
To deflect from these inconvenient facts, she has attacked retailers for alleged profiteering. Cornell disputed her claim, explaining that Target has "reduced prices on 5,000 items" to ease customers' financial stress.
The store has slashed prices on items like diapers and peanut butter in the hopes of attracting customers who are struggling to keep up. Other companies are doing the same, including Walmart, which has reduced its prices, and McDonald's, which has added cheaper value items to its menu.
Moreover, Cornell explained that the nature of the retail business is not conducive to artificially raising prices for items even if they wanted to. "Is there a more competitive space than retail?" Cornell asked rhetorically.
He said that his company is "celebrating the fact that we delivered a margin rate of 6%" while CEOs in other industries "are delivering 20, 30, 40, or 50%" at the same time. "So, we're in a penny business," Cornell said.
Harris is scrambling to distance herself from the failed administration she's a part of by proposing awful solutions that will make things worse. Former President Donald Trump pointed out her role in the problem during his campaign rally Wednesday, the New York Post reported.
"Kamala Harris won’t end the economic crisis; she will only make it worse. I gave Harris and Biden an economic miracle, and they quickly turned it into an economic nightmare with a nation-wrecking agenda ripped straight out of Kamala’s San Francisco liberal playbook," Trump pointed out.
Democrats often see a problem and decide that adding more government control is the solution. Trump's plan is the opposite, as he correctly calls for less government regulation to ensure energy independence and ease inflation.
"At the center of our effort to bring the cost of living under control will be the all-out push to end the Biden-Harris war on a thing called American energy. We will drill, baby, drill," Trump said.
Harris is desperate to make voters forget about the reality of her involvement in inflation. Meanwhile, her proposed policies will only wreck the economy and cause untold numbers of food shortages and further economic issues.
