Harris, Trump fight for edge on economy as key to victory

The results of the presidential election could come down to which candidate has convinced the American people that they are the best choice to handle the economy.

Vice President Harris and former President Trump have been pursuing fundamentally different strategies on the economy, which has polled as the top issue for voters in Tuesday’s general election following three years of elevated inflation and the economic crisis that preceded them.

Trump, who has held an edge on the economy in most polls, has been going full bore on the issue, proposing a bevy of individual tax breaks and general tariffs that could rattle the world of international trade. 

Harris has made up significant ground on the issue since taking over the top of the Democratic presidential ticket in July, narrowing a gulf between Trump and President Biden. The vice president even drew to a virtual tie on who would be best at handling the economy in a Marist poll of Pennsylvania, a swing state potentially pivotal to either candidate's path to victory.

While some of Harris's strength on the economy may be attributable to Biden's departure from the ticket, she has also zeroed in on housing affordability, health care costs and alleged price-fixing as her major economic focuses. She has also moderated from some of Biden's positions on corporate taxes and has expressed an openness to working with businesses.

Here’s a closer look at the messaging that’s been coming out of the campaigns on what could be the make-or-break issue of the general election.

Trump loves tariffs because they’re 'easy to message'

Trump has pledged to institute a general tariff on imported goods at various levels ranging from 10 percent to 20 percent. 

He’s also floated China-specific tariffs as high as 60 percent, picking up the thread of the trade fight he undertook during his first term against one of the U.S.'s main trading partners. Biden left nearly all of Trump’s China tariffs in place, while imposing his own import duties on electric vehicles and other goods earlier this year.

As a campaign strategy, tariffs are appealing to Trump for a number of reasons, political strategists told The Hill. They have long been central to Trump's antiestablishment economic agenda, and they can be carried out independently of Congress.

“There’s multiple reasons Trump loves [tariffs],” said Stephen Myrow, managing partner of Beacon Policy Advisors, told The Hill.

“It lets him feel strong. It is something he can do unilaterally as a CEO as opposed to needing Congress or coordinating with other people in Washington. … And, as he has said before, it’s easy to message, because there are clear targets and it gets headlines.”

Trump has also sought to sell tariffs with a nostalgic appeal that hearkens back to previous eras of U.S. prosperity. Economists caution that a straightforward reversion to historical economic conditions is probably not realistic.

“Trump is trying so hard to bring back the America of 1950, and it will never come back,” labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards told The Hill. “You want to bring back manufacturing jobs? We just need tariffs on China — that’s a fiction.” 

“He only looks toward the past, and that can be really appealing for people. Even nostalgia for time before the pandemic — he’s building off of that, too,” Edwards said.

Harris puts affordability front and center

Biden’s economic approval ratings sagged during the course of his term under the malaise of inflation despite frequent upside surprises in national economic metrics.

Even as the economy ducked recession predictions and job report after job report came in above expectations in 2023, Biden’s economic approval rating dipped as low as 32 percent earlier this year, according to polling by Gallup, which identified the issue as Biden’s “weakest.”

Harris almost instantly gained ground on the issue when she took over the ticket from Biden, closing the gap with Trump relative to Biden by 6 percentage points in Marist polling and by 10 points in Fox News polling in September.

Harris aimed to keep this momentum going by focusing on household expenses. She proposed a formal price-gouging ban on groceries that could include a hard-and-fast price control, a response in part to outsized corporate profits in the aftermath of the pandemic. 

She has centered the issue of affordability on a range of proposals spanning housing, prescription drug costs and health care and medical debt. She has also proposed expanding the child tax credit that lifted millions of American kids out of poverty during the pandemic.

Additionally, Harris proposed raising the capital gains tax for people making more than $1 million a year to 28 percent — a significant reduction from President Biden’s 44.6-percent proposal, representing a shift to the right designed to appeal to more moderate voters.

Harris’s progress and relatively comfortable position on the economy compared to Biden is allowing her to pursue other high-priority issues in her campaign’s homestretch.

“From [Harris’s] perspective, she’s not so much looking to win on the economy as she’s trying to play to a tie, and then have the other issues — such as abortion — be the deciding factor,” Myrow said.

Robust recovery from the pandemic is a double-edged sword for Democrats

While economic rescue measures sent out in response to the pandemic prevented a serious downturn and are likely in the process of delivering the Federal Reserve’s long-sought “soft landing,” inflation has rained on the parade of the economy’s recovery, depriving Democrats of a chance to boast.

“This is truly a chance that many economists said the U.S. economy would not have within four years, and yet here it is in front of us. That’s remarkable — but you can’t erase the economic pain that people went through or tell them, ‘Actually, you could have had it a lot worse,’” Edwards said.

Rather than try to sing the praises of the Biden administration’s policy response to the pandemic, the strategy for Harris has been to speak plainly about costs and expenses and stress the importance of further reducing them.

“What Kamala and Democrats have done is speak to people in real language, not lofty policy language, not try to convince people the economy is great but just say that we’re still fighting to lower prices,” Ashley Woolheater, a communications strategist for progressive causes and former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), told The Hill.