The NPR Politics Podcast - How Harris And Trump Are Talking About The Economy

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Kamala Harris wants to combat "corporate price gouging." Donald Trump wants to eliminate taxes on Social Security. But the president's powers over the economy are actually quite limited. Here's what the candidates are saying on the trail.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and campaign correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello, my name is Lily and I'm from Alaska. I'm here with one of my three cats that I named after artists. This one is Edgar Allan Poe. The other two are Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. This podcast was recorded at 12.37 p.m. on Thursday, August 15th. Things may have changed by the time that you hear this, but I will, unfortunately, be preparing to leave my cats for my first year of college at Oregon State University's Honors College, studying chemical engineering. Go Beavs! All right, how many ears does the cat Van Gogh have? Great question. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign. Today, the economy and the presidential campaign. Inflation is down. So are some prices. But it remains a key issue for voters. So what are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump promising to do about it? The candidates aren't releasing detailed policy proposals, but we do have some idea of what they'll do. So let's start with Vice President Harris. Asma, she is giving her first policy address of the campaign tomorrow, and it's focused on bringing down costs for American consumers. So what expected to particularly talk about the high cost of meat. And my understanding is a number of states already have limitations on how corporations set prices and on price gouging, but there isn't some sort of law like this at the federal level. So her campaign is describing this as a first at the federal level. And it's something that I would say leans into her background as being a prosecutor, as being attorney general.

You know, look, inflation, high costs, these have remained very persistent, consistent worries for voters. And they know that when you're 80 some days away from the election, that's the primary economic vision you need to focus on. Absolutely. And I'm wondering, how different is this from President Biden? Because he's talking about junk fees all the time. He's talking about bringing down prescription drug prices. In're going to be talking about lowering prescription drug costs. You know, this is something that President Biden has prioritized. He talks about building up the middle class. So does Harris. You know, what I was struck by in doing a story about Harris's economic vision is that it seems like most of the economic advisors I have talked to, whether they are Biden people or Harris people, will say that there is not much distinction between Harris and Biden. It is like a degree of differentiation, maybe a degree of focus where she will prioritize and where we've seen her prioritize.

But the big vision you hear from her out on the campaign trail in her stump speech sounds very similar to Joe Biden. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity to build a business, to own a home, to build intergenerational wealth, a future with affordable healthcare, affordable affordable child care, paid leave. And all of this is to say, building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. In some ways, the difference here is Harris's emphasis, her empathy that she's trying to bring in how she talks about high prices. They can propose policies, and for many of them they need Congress, for ways to bring down particular prices to do this and that. They can propose, for example, cutting government spending or raising government spending, and that can have very indirect effects on inflation. But whether we're talking about Trump or Harris or Biden, the president can't really, you know, ratchet inflation up or down. But the one thing that I also have been thinking about this week is the latest inflation numbers that have come out have shown that inflation is cooling. It's not quite to the level where the Federal Reserve would like, but inflation is cooling. But even if that keeps happening,

I do think this is still going to be a big issue come Election Day because it's cumulative inflation is is still pretty big. Like over the last few years, because of covid, because of wars, because of all sorts of things, prices have ratcheted up and up and up. And they are just simply way higher right now than people remember them being in 2019, for example. Danielle, former President Trump is a former president. He has an economic record. He did things when he was president, including tax cuts for the wealthy and large businesses, tariffs and some trade war type stuff. Is he essentially saying that he will do more of the same? I think broadly speaking, that's a fair assessment. He has talked about trying to further cut corporate taxes, for example. He has talked about trying to impose more tariffs, which, of course, he did impose tariffs as president. There are a couple of newish policies, for example, the taxes on ending a Congress that can help him with some of this? Yet he was able to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act because he had a Republican Congress for a while there. Well, would he have that again if reelected?

We don't know. So, Asma, I do want to ask you in terms of polling, you know, it's quite common for Republicans to poll better on the economy than Democrats. And that is certainly the case with Trump, who plays up his persona as a businessman. Harris doesn't appear to perform as badly as Biden on the question of who voters trust more to handle the economy. So why is that? What do you guys make of that? I think there's a couple of reasons. One is that Harris has been relatively unknown. I mean, I think to those of us who cover politics, we're like, oh, she's been the vice president for a few years. But voters are still learning who Harris is.

I think it's why you've seen her favorability numbers change very rapidly. It's because people are getting to know her. And I think in this moment, Republicans and Democrats are in a real race to define Harris. And so I think that is why you're seeing her try to articulate some actual concrete economic policy visions, because you've seen Republicans argue that, well, Harris is the sitting vice president. She's a part of the Biden administration and try to tie her and link her to the negative perceptions people have about Biden and the economy. And what you're seeing from Harris is, I think, to a degree, some articulation of what her economic vision would be. You're also seeing them try to contrast their vision with Trump. I mean, they've really been trying to lean into the fact that this tariff policy Trump has

to sort of ring around the United States of putting tariffs on essentially every country would really hurt, in their view, the middle class. It would make inflation worse. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and more in a moment. And we're back. And I want to step back. We've gotten into some of the details of what Trump and Harris are proposing related to the economy. But what is their economic vision for America? If Trump could do everything he wanted to do, what would he have the U.S. economy look like, Danielle? In some ways, his economic

plans look like old school Republicans. And I'm going to say I want to stress that in some ways, in some ways they're very different. For example, he's a big fan of deregulation. Judges that he appointed when he was president have greatly weakened the government's ability to regulate, particularly judges on the Supreme Court have done this. He wants to lower taxes on corporations. This would help richer Americans. But beyond that, he has policies that are quite different from old school Republicans. For example, he's very protectionist. We've already talked about this. He would raise tariffs. That's one of his big, big things. He wants to cut particular taxes, for example, on Social Security

benefits and on tips. He has talked about lowering taxes in other ways. It's unclear entirely what he would want to cut. He has big changes he wants to make and would if he could. Asma, how do you see Kamala Harris's vision for the country in terms of the economy? You know, there's this line that President Biden often talks about, about building up the middle class from the bottom up and the middle out. And I would say that Harris has used that line. But there's an aside she has mentioned, which she'll say from the bottom up, the middle out. And as I say, from the outside in. And to me, that last phrase is a glimpse into how she thinks about the economy. You know, people have told me that she thinks often about who has not historically had access to capital.

She thinks a lot about the focus around wealth creation and racial equity. You know, I would say that when you look at how she has taken on the job as vice president, she seemed to focus a lot on small business creation. She was a real advocate for the expansion of the child tax credit, being a part of that American Rescue Plan. Remember, during COVID, she even took to the pages of The Washington Post to put out this op-ed describing the fact that so many women were leaving the workforce as a national emergency. And so, you know, I think it is a degree of differentiation, again, between her and President Biden. But she seems to think about who historically hasn't had access to equity, who hasn't historically had access to capital. And I think we'll probably

see some of that if she were to become president in terms of how she would govern. Yeah. To close this out, I think we should talk about the fact that we actually can't predict what's going to happen in the economy. There are a lot of X factors. We're watching to see if the Federal Reserve will lower rates in September. Last month's jobs report was worse than many people were expecting. The markets had a rocky few days. At the moment, is the economy one of the biggest issues in this race? Could it become a bigger issue if something happens? Of course? Could it become a bigger issue if something happens? Of course, it could become a bigger issue if something years now is the declining grip of the economy on elections because people are very much in the trench for their team, to mix metaphors,

and they know who they want to vote for. And it would take a heck of a lot to move them towards the other side. So people who want to vote for Kamala Harris, I don't know what economic thing could happen that would move them away from her. And that is increasingly how the electorate is looking. Republicans think the economy is great under Trump and bad under Harris and vice versa for Democrats. So whatever the economy does, I think it will have much less effect than we might have thought in past years when we covered presidential races. And to echo Danielle, I think the clearest indication of that were the results from the midterms. I mean, I spent a whole bunch of months going out of the country talking to people about inflation. They told me how deeply worried they were about it. And certainly some voters did cast their ballots with the economy in mind. But at the end of the day, we saw that there were other factors, namely reproductive rights and abortion, that was really top of mind for a lot of voters. So I do think the economy this cycle feels extremely unpredictable. And I would argue

even more unpredictable because Kamala Harris isn't a true incumbent the way Joe Biden was. She is the vice president. There tends to be this view that the party in power is hurt by a downturn in the economy. But I think Harris isn't viewed as a true incumbent the way that Joe Biden was. All right, well, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.