Kamala Harris’ Economic Program: Export US Jobs
Kamala Harris’ economic plan would institute policies that will export U.S. jobs. Of course, Harris will not say this — because, after all, Harris refuses to say anything to anybody — but it’s what her big-government, macro-managing strategy entails. Rather than creating a broadly conducive economic environment, Harris targets specific sectors to advance her far-left ideological goals. The result: higher taxes, higher spending, and more regulation that will reduce America’s competitiveness — and leave more Americans unemployed.
In her touted Sept. 25 economic speech, Kamala Harris stated, “I am a capitalist. I believe in free and fair markets.” She then proceeded to prove otherwise. As her other economic initiatives show — promoting price controls and promising to build three million new houses — Harris is no “capitalist;” she is not because she does not believe in “free” markets as much as she believes that they must be what she deems “fair markets.”
Her speech’s centerpiece was $100 billion for new manufacturing initiatives in “the industries of the future,” such as: “biomanufacturing,” “aerospace,” “AI,” and “clean energy.”
While allowing Harris another superficial soundbite, serious questions should follow.
First, if these are “the sectors that will define the next century,” why do they need government investment? The money should already be flying into these — as it is into AI by the hundreds of billions.
The answer is that Harris wants government “investment” so she can dictate how these sectors do their business. Her “investment” will go to those “expanding good union jobs” and offering apprenticeships (which Harris committed to doubling). Additional rules and regulations will undoubtedly come later.
Second, how will Harris pay for this investment? By raising taxes on U.S. companies operating overseas and avoiding “paying their fair share to the United States.”
In other words, Harris’ big $100 billion plan merely appears to shift money from one sector to another. This is wrong, however. As Harris stated an MSNBC interview later the same day, “Well, but we’re going to have to raise corporate taxes.”
Harris does not want to merely “raise corporate taxes,” her plan calls for increasing them by 33 percent (from 21 percent to 28 percent). The Tax Foundation has analyzed Harris’ economic agenda and determined that it would mean a gross tax increase of about $4.1 trillion over 10 years. Even factoring out her government-micromanaging tax credits and cuts, Harris’ hike still nets out to $1.7 trillion. The Harris plan also would lose 786,000 American jobs.
So, Harris is hardly cutting taxes on America’s economy. Rather, she is proposing to increase them. Enormously.
Writ large, Harris proposes picking winners and losers for America’s economy. Always a bad idea — picking winners and losers is the marketplace’s job — it’s particularly so for a scion of an administration so adept at picking losers.
A prime example of Biden–Harris lemon-picking is the Inflation Reduction Act. Even Biden confesses the false advertising. Less than two months ago, he admitted: “The Inflation Reduction Act — I wish I hadn’t called it that, because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth.” Indeed. The bill contained $370 billion in new so-called government “investment.” It also raises the question of why Harris’ additional $100 billion is needed.
Harris’ accompanying regs, rules, and red tape also undoubtedly mean her grandiose promises will likely go unrealized. Examples of this come from the Biden–Harris administration’s failures to build EV charging stations and build out broadband internet into rural America.
And none of what Harris is now talking about includes the mammoth government spending program she cosponsored in the Senate and backed in 2020’s Democrat presidential nomination contest: the Green New Deal. Irrelevant now? Hardly.
The Green New Deal epitomizes the Biden–Harris overspending that unleashed inflation over the last four years and $7.7 trillion in CBO-estimated deficits (fiscal years 2021–2024). Harris’ economic plans show her itching to continue excessive spending. Its debilitating inflationary effects have driven up costs, reduced Americans’ savings, increased their borrowing, and driven home mortgage costs out of reach.
Harris’ error is a continuation of the Biden–Harris error, which is itself that of the environmental ideologues. Unilaterally increasing U.S. environmental mandates raises the cost of doing business here relative to the rest of the world. American businesses next move to less developed countries (with lower environmental standards), and America then imports these products it no longer produces. The result? Fewer businesses, fewer jobs, dirtier production.
Harris’ vacuity reflects the Left’s fallacy: not that America’s economy cannot manage to perform better, but that government management can make it do so. An even bigger fallacy is that the Left can do that managing. And the biggest fallacy of all is that Harris can oversee it.
J.T. Young is the author of the upcoming book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, OMB, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
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