“Middle class.” Democratic candidate Kamala Harris repeated these two words nine times in a speech of just 40 minutes on Wednesday in Pittsburgh on her economic platform, in which she promised “a new path forward” for families and ordinary workers and tried to appeal to moderate voters, including those more centrist Republicans who may not be convinced by her party’s candidate, Donald Trump. The vice president presented herself as a defender of the middle classes to try to mark a drastic contrast with her rival, whom she described as only concerned about millionaires.
In this campaign, the old mantra “It’s the economy, stupid,” with which Bill Clinton won the US presidency in 1992, is more relevant than ever. Six weeks before the November 5 elections, the polls indicate that it is the issue that most worries Americans hit by three years of rampant inflation. And the two presidential candidates are battling to crown themselves as the best option to restore peace to citizens’ pockets, amid signs that the Republican’s advantage on this campaign issue is shrinking.
“We don’t have to be limited by ideology. Instead, we have to look for practical solutions,” said the vice president, who described herself as a “capitalist” in her most detailed speech yet on the measures she plans to implement if she wins the White House. Her promises include cutting taxes for a third of Americans and offering subsidies to companies that create “good jobs” and allow their employees to unionize.
“I have pledged that building a strong middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” said the candidate, who stressed her belief in “free markets” and “an active partnership between government and the private sector.” To deliver this speech, Harris chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s second largest city, which she has already visited four times during her campaign. Pennsylvania is emerging as the state she needs to win at all costs to triumph in this election.
Hours earlier, Trump had appeared at a rally in North Carolina to promote his economic proposals for the third time in 48 hours, after speaking in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The former president’s plan includes a general increase in tariffs and measures to encourage foreign industries to open factories in the United States, through corporate tax cuts and offers of federally owned land.
So far, the economy has been one of the Democrats’ biggest weak points. While President Joe Biden was the party’s nominee, poll after poll placed him up to fifteen points behind Donald Trump in voters’ perceptions of who would be the better manager.
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During Biden’s term, the economy has grown by 8.4%, 15.7 million jobs have been created and the unemployment rate is below 4%. But the average American has been suffering from the effect on their pockets of an inflation that has been rampant for the last three years and accumulated 19% before being controlled in recent months.
The Republican candidate’s lead has begun to narrow, however. The latest poll aggregators suggest that Trump’s lead over Harris as guardian of the economy has narrowed to six points. Some polls, such as those published by the Financial Times, claim that the Democrat has already surpassed her rival as the candidate Americans trust most as guardian of the national economy, by 44 to 42%.
There are two reasons for this 180-degree turn less than six weeks before the November 5 election.
On the one hand, prices have stabilized and wages are growing faster than the CPI. And, above all, the definitive sign that the worst is behind us: the decision last week by the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by half a point, the first reduction in four and a half years and a sign that it considers inflation to be under control. The measure of the Fed has already begun to trickle down to rate cuts in the mortgage sector, which has been strangled for months by the highest rates in two decades, and has triggered a wave of optimism among home buyers who had been locked out of the market. A University of Michigan survey finds that consumer sentiment about the economy’s health is up 40 percentage points from its low point in June 2022.
On the other hand, Harris has adopted a very different strategy from Biden. As a candidate, the president wanted to put the emphasis on macroeconomic data and on his ambitious laws to boost the country’s economy in the post-pandemic era – the green energy boost law, the infrastructure law, the CHIPS law to encourage the national semiconductor and innovation sector – something that failed to connect with the average American, who did not see any advantage from this abstract legislation in their domestic finances.
Harris, on the other hand, has chosen to present economic measures that the average American can take for granted. In August, she announced her first embryonic economic program, repeated and expanded on Wednesday, which included measures to combat the artificial rise in prices, as well as promising steps to facilitate access to housing. Among them, $25,000 for first-time home buyers, or the construction of three million new homes. Or an increase in tax breaks for babies. Harris has also promised to make tips tax-free, a measure that her rival had already proposed.
Meanwhile, Trump has been focusing his economic program on cutting taxes for citizens and companies and imposing tariffs on imports from abroad. Measures that the former president, who already unleashed a trade war with China during his term in office by decreeing these taxes against Chinese goods in 2018, describes as “the best thing ever invented.”
Apparently unafraid of unleashing a colossal trade war if he keeps his promises, the former president says he will apply “100%” tariffs to any country that moves away from using the dollar. He has also promised to tax any vehicle entering from Mexico and raise tariffs on Chinese products to 60%. He has also threatened tractor manufacturer John Deere with 200% tariffs if it moves some of its plants to Mexico, something that experts warn could violate the North American free trade agreement.
In this battle of economic programs, the Democratic candidate recently scored a point: nearly 400 economists and former American economic officials have given their support to Harris for the presidency of the country, according to the vice president’s campaign. And the calculations of the Wharton business school at Penn University – the alma mater Trump’s plan—says the former president’s plan would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, five times more than Harris’ plans. In the opinion of these experts, the measures promised by Trump “risk unleashing inflation again and threaten both domestic economic stability and the global position of the United States.”
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