Derided by Donald Trump as a “communist,” Kamala Harris is playing up her street cred as a capitalist.
Attacked by Harris as a rich kid who got $400 million from his father on a “silver platter,” Trump is leaning into his raw populism.
The two presidential candidates had dueling speeches on Wednesday that reflect how they’re honing their economic messages for voters in battleground states. Both are trying to counter criticism of them while laying out their best case for a public that still worries about the economy’s health.
Vice President Harris is set to speak at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, where she plans to stress a “pragmatic” philosophy while outlining new policies to boost domestic manufacturing, according to a senior campaign official who sought anonymity to describe the upcoming address. The Democratic nominee’s remarks come after she told a swanky audience of donors in New York City on Sunday that she would cut any “red tape” holding back growth.
Former President Trump delivered a speech in Mint Hill, North Carolina in which he claimed the economy was weak, despite inflation easing and the unemployment rate at a healthy 4.2%. The Republican nominee made his reputation as a businessman, but he’s recently expressed a willingness to crack down on businesses and has proposed to cap interest rates on credit cards and slap a whopping 200% tariff on tractor-maker John Deere if it moves any jobs to Mexico.
The candidates are each emphasizing the economy at a time when polls show that it is one of the most important issues for voters as they consider who to support. A recent AP-NORC poll found that neither candidate has a decisive edge with the public on the issue.
Both are eager to embrace an image as tax cutters and are accusing the other of backing massive tax hikes on the middle class. It’s a meaningful shift in messaging as inflation concerns have ebbed somewhat with the Federal Reserve cutting its benchmark interest rates last week.
In his speech that included insinuations that Iran was tied to the two assassination attempts against him, Trump defended tariffs to a group of furniture makers as a way to protect their jobs.
“If I didn’t do what I did, this building would be now shuttered, closed, empty, no jobs,” said Trump. The former president said some “Wall Street geniuses” called him about why he only pledged to cut corporate taxes for companies that make their goods in the United States and he said he told them, “I did.”
Trump said the corporate tax rate would drop from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products domestically. He said that his support of tariffs is making him an international target, saying, “This is why people in countries want to kill me. They’re not happy with me.”
Billionaire Mark Cuban said business leaders like him are backing Harris because she has taken considered stances that companies can understand even when they have a different perspective.
“I want a president that for business goes into details and has a policy team that understands all the ramifications of what’s been proposed,” Cuban said on a Tuesday call with reporters set up by the Harris campaign.
The Harris campaign’s efforts to show their business support have overlapped with Trump’s offering a host of populist ideas. In addition to wanting no taxes on tips, Social Security or overtime pay, he wants to limit the interest rate on credit cards to 10% and set up low-tax zones on federal lands to lure employers. Trump also wants to ditch the cap on the deduction of state and local taxes that he put into the tax code in 2017 while president.
Both candidates see an opportunity to trash the other’s tax ideas. Trump recently dubbed Harris the “tax queen.” She wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% as well as tax the unrealized capital gains of people worth more than $100 million. She would use the revenue from that and other policies to sustain tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire after 2025 as well as offer new tax breaks to parents and entrepreneurs. Many of her policies build on ideas initially proposed by President Joe Biden.
Trump claims her tax hikes would ultimately trickle down to the middle class.
“She’s coming for your money,” he told an audience on Monday. “She’s coming for your pensions, and she’s coming for your savings.”
Harris has shown that two can play that game. She labeled his call for tariffs a “national sales tax,” as it could increase the cost of coffee, clothes, electronics, autos and almost anything that gets imported or depends on imported parts. Her campaign likes to cite an analysis that originated with Brendan Duke of the Center for American Progress that estimated a 20% universal tariff would cost a typical family almost $4,000 a year. For taxpayers in the middle-income range, that sum would effectively increase their total federal taxes by 50%, according to calculations based on Treasury Department data.
Speaking in Georgia on Tuesday, Trump singled out the word “tariff” for praise, calling it “one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.” He said it would raise hundreds of billions in tax revenues and not cause inflation.
Most economic analyses say broad tariffs would worsen inflation. The investment bank Goldman Sachs suggested that the tariffs, accompanied by a crackdown on immigrants in the United States, would hurt growth.
Harris has made efforts to elevate the middle class her top priority, often talking about her own background in the middle class to suggest that her ideas emerged out of a personal journey.
But at a New York City event on Sunday, she also made a pitch aimed at corporations that want less drama when dealing with government.
“We will create a stable business environment with consistent and transparent rules of the road,” Harris said. “We will invest in semiconductors, clean energy, and other industries of the future. And we will cut needless bureaucracy and unnecessary red tape, all of which will create jobs, drive broad-based economic growth, and cement America’s leadership throughout the world.”
