Axios slammed for saying Harris policy is not price controls, after calling similar policies price controls
X users slammed a recent Axios article with a "Community Notes" fact-check this week after the outlet rejected the notion that Vice President Kamala Harris’ "price gouging" policy proposal amounts to price controls.
Readers on the social media platform pointed out that multiple other Axios pieces – including one from the same author defending the Democratic presidential candidate’s new proposals – called similar policies in other countries "price controls."
"The same author called it ‘price controls’ when the UK proposed voluntary caps on grocery store profits," part of the X Community Note stated on Tuesday.
Harris announced last week that she would institute a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries" as president to stop "big corporations" from taking advantage of consumers.
The headline for Axios reporter Emily Peck’s piece – as it appeared on X – read, "Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work."
In addition to denying that Harris’ policy proposal is "Soviet-style price controls," Peck defended it as in keeping with already-existing laws in the U.S.
"If banning price gouging is communist, then the U.S. went Marxist long ago. Most of us live in states that already have bans in place," Peck wrote, though, as her reporting noted, these laws only "prohibit companies from jacking up prices during emergencies."
Peck then assumed that Harris’ policy would only be implemented in an emergency, writing, "If a national price gouging ban is structured like these local bans, only triggered by emergencies and targeted to specific firms, it's not clear it would make much of a dent."
X users were sharply critical of Peck’s headline, engaging the "Community Notes" function on the platform which flagged the author’s supposedly inconsistent reporting on similar price control proposals.
The note provided a link to Peck’s 2023 piece that called similar policies in the UK price-controls.
At the time, she wrote, "The U.K. is mulling voluntary price controls on essential food items, as the country grapples with sky-high inflation at the grocery store. Why it matters: Persistent inflation is changing the conversation around price controls. Once waved off as an affront to capitalism, they're starting to look more appealing — especially to politicians who want to avoid headlines about people who can't afford to eat."
The other part of the fact-check stated, "Axios called it ‘price controls’ when it was proposed to limit how much Russia could profit off oil in a time of crisis."
It provided a link to that 2022 piece from Axios reporter Matt Phillips that stated, "Price controls were largely abandoned after the '70s, as both American and global policy shifted toward less government involvement in the economy."
Phillips added, "On Friday, finance ministers from the G-7 group of major economies pledged to put in place a plan aimed at limiting the amount of money Russia makes from oil sales, effectively forming a buyers cartel to try to cap prices of Russian crude."
Axios did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.