After the Harris campaign shared details of what to expect from the candidate’s economic policy speech on Friday, some big-wigs in Silicon Valley lost no time in bashing the yet unspoken proposals. In particular, they slammed her plan to impose the first federal ban on corporate price-gouging and high grocery costs.
According to the campaign, Harris intends to enact the ban within the first 100 days of her presidency, as well as empower the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and punish corporations that break the rules. She will also instruct her administration to look into proposed mergers between large food companies to ensure that grocery prices don’t rise in an anti-competitive environment.
Marc Andreessen, who has become one of the leading faces of Silicon Valley’s emergent right-wing coalition, drew unfavorable parallels to price caps in Venezuela. In a thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, he quoted an NPR article about Hugo Chavez’ decision to cap the price of food in supermarkets in 2003.
“‘The result of Venezuelan economic policies has been a humanitarian disaster. Only in 2017, the average Venezuelan adult lost 24 pounds because there was not enough to eat. Children are dying from a lack of nutrition. And millions of people have fled the country,'” the quotes read.
Andreessen was not alone in his complaints — David Sacks, a venture capitalist and another prominent Trump supporter in Silicon Valley, retweeted a post from a partner at Sequoia Capital.
“I was hoping I’d wake up and this was just a nightmare but it seems it’s reality,” the post read, with the words sitting above a screenshot of headlines about the soon-to-be proposed policy. “Price controls on food has literally been the beginning of the end for economies in the communist playbook”
The discontent deepens an emergent divide in Silicon Valley, where a noisy faction of leaders are throwing their support behind Trump.
Harris, for her part, has significant support among other big business and tech names, though is still struggling to clearly define her regulatory policies. She is at once trying to appeal to her pro-business donors and economic conservatives in her own party, who are likely cheering her upcoming proposals.
Just yesterday, Mars, which owns brands like M&Ms and Snickers, announced that it is buying salty snack owner Kellanova for nearly $36 billion. The deal is one of this year’s biggest and comes as the Biden administration continues to scrutinize mergers.
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