WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose the first federal ban on “corporate price gouging in the food and grocery industry,” her campaign team announced late Wednesday.

“There is a big difference between fair prices in competitive markets and inflated prices that are disproportionate to the cost of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”

The proposed ban is part of a broader economic policy program that the Democratic presidential candidate plans to present at a campaign rally in contested North Carolina on Friday.

Harris also announced that if elected president, she would instruct her administration to take a closer look at potential mergers between major supermarkets and food manufacturers, “particularly in light of the risk that the proposed merger could lead to higher food prices for consumers,” her campaign team said.

This package of regulatory proposals is one of the Harris campaign’s earliest attempts to design an economic program that is independent of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Before Biden abruptly dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris, he had spent more than a year campaigning for re-election, blaming corporate greed for higher consumer prices driven by inflation.

But Harris’ plan still fits firmly into Biden’s overall regulatory approach, which prioritizes consumer protections across a range of industries and files lawsuits to block several major corporate mergers.

In March, the White House launched a “Strike Against Unfair and Illegal Pricing,” a joint initiative of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

On Friday, Harris will specifically target the meat industry, saying that “rising meat prices are responsible for a large portion of Americans’ higher grocery bills, even as meat processing companies posted record profits following the pandemic,” her campaign team said in a statement.

The Democratic presidential candidate will also put forward proposals to reduce consumer costs in two other sectors where companies have aggressively exercised their pricing power: prescription drugs and housing.

Harris’ speech comes two days after her opponent, former President Donald Trump, delivered his own economic policy speech in North Carolina in which he blamed Harris for high consumer goods prices.

“You pay the price for (Harris’) liberal extremism at the gas pump, at the supermarket checkout and on your mortgage bill,” Trump said in Asheville.

Almost a month after starting her campaign, Harris has already closed Trump’s lead over Biden in national polls and in swing states.

But Trump maintains his long-standing lead over Democrats when it comes to which candidate voters believe would be best for the economy.