“Middle class”. The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, repeated these two words up to nine times in a barely 40-minute speech this Wednesday in Pittsburgh about her economic program, in which she promised “a new path forward” for families and ordinary workers. sought to appeal to moderate voters, including those more centrist Republicans who may not be convinced by their 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, polls indicate that it is the issue that most worries Americans hit by three years of rampant inflation. And the two presidential candidates are fighting to be crowned the best option to restore peace of mind to the pockets of citizens, amid signs that the advantage that the Republican enjoyed in this campaign issue is being reduced.
“We don’t have to be limited by ideology. Instead, we have to look for practical solutions,” appealed the vice president, who described herself as “capitalist” in her most detailed speech so far on the measures she plans to apply if she wins the White House. His 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 promised that developing a strong middle class will be the defining goal of my presidency,” said the candidate, who emphasized her belief in “free markets” and “an active alliance between the government and the private sector.” To deliver this speech, Harris chose Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s second city, which she has already visited four times in her campaign. Pennsylvania is emerging as the State that needs to win at all costs to succeed in these elections.
A few hours earlier, Trump appeared at a rally in North Carolina also to promote his economic proposals for the third time in 48 hours, after interventions 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 reductions in corporate taxes and offers of federally owned land.
Until now, the economy has been one of the Democrats’ big weaknesses. While President Joe Biden was the party’s candidate, poll after poll placed him up to fifteen points below Donald Trump in voters’ perception of who would be the best 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 around 4%. But the average American has been hurting by the effect on his pockets of inflation that was rampant in the last three years and accumulated 19% before being controlled in recent months.
The Republican candidate’s lead has begun to narrow, however. The aggregators of the latest polls point out that Trump’s distance over Harris as guardian of the economy has been reduced 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 whom Americans trust most as guardian of the national economy, by 44% to 42%.
The reasons are twofold for this 180-degree turn less than six weeks before the November 5 election.
On the one hand, prices have stabilized and salaries are growing above the CPI. And, above all, the definitive gesture 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 is now considering tamed inflation. The measure of the Fed It has already begun to translate into rate cuts in the mortgage sector, strangled for months by the highest rates in two decades, and has unleashed a wave of optimism among home buyers who had been left out of the market. A University of Michigan survey finds that consumer sentiment about the economy’s health has risen 40 percentage points from its lowest 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 emphasis on macroeconomic data and his ambitious laws to boost the country’s economy in the post-pandemic era — the law to promote green energy, the infrastructure law, the CHIPS law to encourage the sector national semiconductor and innovation—: something that could not connect with the average American, who did not perceive advantages of this abstract legislation in their domestic finances.
Harris, on the other hand, has chosen to present economic measures that the average American can relate to. In August it announced its first embryo of an economic program, repeated and expanded this Wednesday, in which it included measures to fight against the artificial increase in prices, in addition to promising steps to facilitate access to housing. Among them, $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, or the construction of three million new homes. Or an increase in baby tax credits. Harris has also promised to deduct tips, 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 mandate by decreeing these taxes against Chinese goods in 2018, describes as “the best thing that has ever been invented.”
Without apparent fear of unleashing, of fulfilling his promises, a trade war of colossal dimensions, the former president assures that he will apply “100%” rates to any country that moves away from the use of the dollar. He has also promised to tax any vehicle entering from Mexico and raise tariffs on Chinese products to 60%. It 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 US economic officials have given their support to Harris for the presidency of the country, according to the vice president’s campaign. And calculations from the Wharton business school at Penn University—the alma mater of Trump—consider that the former president’s plan would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit in the next decade, five times more than Harris’ plans. In the opinion of these experts, the measures that Trump promises “risk unleashing again inflation and threaten both the domestic economic stability and the global position of the United States.”
