During their speeches at their party conventions, both Kamala Harris (Democratic nominee) and Trump (Republican nominee) talked about money problems like taxes and inflation.
During her speech in Chicago on Thursday, Harris promised to “end America’s housing shortage.” Trump promised to “end the devastating inflation crisis immediately” when he spoke in Milwaukee more than a month ago.
So how do you think they’ll keep those promises?
Here are some of the most important parts of each candidate for president’s economic plan, as reported by BourseWatch.
Price rises
- This month, Harris has focused her efforts to fight inflation on stopping big companies from raising prices, but some people don’t agree with her. The vice president wants to stop grocery stores and other food companies from raising prices without a good reason. He also wants to closely watch any plans for big food companies to join.
- Trump has said that one way he will fight high prices is by increasing U.S. energy XLE 1.49% production. However, under the Biden-Harris administration, oil production in the U.S. had already hit all-time highs. The former president and other Republicans have also promised to fight inflation by cutting back on rules and spending that isn’t needed.
- During the Biden-Harris administration, inflation rose the most in 40 years. This helped keep President Joe Biden’s approval numbers low, even though inflation has gone down this year. Several things, including huge government spending by Trump and then Biden to deal with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, problems in the supply chain during the pandemic, the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too low for too long, and stimulus policies put in place in other countries, are blamed by economists for the rise in inflation.
Business taxes and paper gains
- Biden and other Democrats have also called for a 28% corporate tax rate and a fourfold increase in the 1% tax on stock buybacks. Harris and her colleagues are asking for the same things. Her team said she backs the tax hikes in Biden’s most recent budget proposal. These included a controversial plan to tax people with more than $100 million in wealth on their unrealized capital gains as income. In 2017, Trump signed a tax-cut package that lowered the corporate tax rate to 21% and helped power stocks SPX 1.15% reach all-time highs. This was his most important legislative success while in office. It was reported by MarketWatch that if Trump is elected again, he wants to cut the company tax rate to 15%, so investors may get a sequel.
- No matter who wins, either Harris or Trump, the next president will have to work with Congress to figure out how to extend a number of tax cuts that were made in 2017 for businesses and individuals. These cuts will end in 2025. “I see the tax rules that are set to expire in 2025 as this hurricane we can already see coming,” an expert told BourseWatch.
Tariffs
- Many of the tariffs put in place by Trump have been kept in place by the Biden-Harris government, and new tariffs have been put on Chinese goods, like electric vehicles NIO 2.26% LI -0.61%. At the same time, Harris’s campaign has criticized Trump for suggesting 10% to 20% tariffs, which seems like a step up from his original plan for a 10% tariff on all goods. They say that these tariffs would cost U.S. families about $3,900 a year, on top of the high prices they already face.
- Trump was known for getting into trade fights with China and other countries that hurt the markets while he was president. Last week, he said in a speech about the economy in North Carolina that he wanted to put “10% to 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.” The former president has also suggested putting 60% taxes on goods that come from China. Some people who support Trump have said they are worried about tariffs because American businesses and customers would have to pay for them. They also said they hoped tariffs would only be used as a bargaining chip to get better trade deals with other countries.
Not enough cheap homes
- Harris wants three million homes to be built in the next four years. A new $40 billion innovation fund and a tax break for makers of starter homes will help make this happen. She also wants to give $25,000 to people who are buying their first home, even though some people say this would make more people want to buy homes, which would drive up costs.
- On Monday, Trump is said to have said that he might help people who want to buy a house but can’t afford the down payment. He and other Republicans have said that one way to help people buy homes is to cut down on rules that make it more expensive to buy one and to allow some government land to be developed. An expert told BourseWatch, “On the Republican side, there’s more of an understanding that this is a state and local matter.”
Gas and other fossil fuel prices
- In an economic speech last week, Harris talked about how painful it is to pay for gas and other necessities. But in her first month as a presidential candidate, she hasn’t said much about fossil fuels. The Harris team says she is no longer against fracking, even though she spoke out against it when she was running for president in 2019. On the other hand, Cornerstone analysts have said that a Harris administration is likely to be stricter on both offshore and onshore oil and natural gas production than a second Trump government. A top economic adviser to the Biden-Harris administration praised the administration’s energy record last week. They said that when gasoline prices went up, the government responded with the largest-ever release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and also helped other countries release oil from their reserves.
- Last month, the head of a lobbying group for the U.S. oil and gas business praised Trump’s track record of supporting industry, but he also said he was worried about tariffs from a second Trump administration. The main idea behind President Trump’s policies was to help the United States use its resources more effectively. However, Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, told BourseWatch that this has not been the case during the Biden era.
EV tax credit of $7,500
- Harris said earlier this month that she was happy to have cast the deciding vote in the Senate for the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This law gave buyers of electric vehicles federal tax credits of up to $7,500. Support for electric vehicles (EVs) has been a big part of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies and speeches. For example, they backed a rule to limit pollution from tailpipes that Republicans called a “EV mandate.”
- Trump said on Monday that he hasn’t decided yet whether to get rid of or limit the $7,500 EV tax credit. He did say again, though, that he wants to get rid of the emissions regulation. EVs’ range has been attacked by Trump, but he has also called them “incredible” and said that the U.S. needs gasoline-powered cars too. He has said nice things about Elon Musk, the CEO of the famous electric car company Tesla TSLA 4.59%, who backed Trump in the 2024 election.
Tax credit for kids
- BourseWatch reported that Harris last week wanted to raise the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600 per child. She also wants to raise the credit for families with kids younger than 1 to $6,000.
- Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, has talked about raising the credit to $5,000 per child per family. In an interview with CBS, a few days before Harris’s, he made the same idea.
There are no taxes on tips or Social Security.
- Harris asked this month that taxes be taken off of income from tips. This comes two months after Trump suggested that tips should not be taxed. The Harris team has given some details about her plan to make it stand out, pointing out that it would go along with a push to raise the minimum wage. A BourseWatch story says that any change to the law that would allow such an exemption would also affect income taxes. However, payroll taxes would still be charged.
- At a rally in Nevada in June, Trump said that he didn’t think tips should be taxed. Nevada is a swing state with a lot of people who work for tips. Before Harris said she agreed with the change, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a well-known Trump supporter, said he thought Trump would win Nevada “on that one issue alone.” Three weeks ago, the former president made a similar suggestion when he said that seniors shouldn’t have to pay taxes on their Social Security payments.
Health care debt and drug costs
- As Harris has said, the Inflation Reduction Act had parts that limited the amount of money seniors could spend on insulin out of pocket to $35 a month and on drugs like PJP 0.91% to $2,000 a year. The caps she wants to see should apply to everyone, not just seniors, and she has promised to work on getting rid of medical debt.
- Trump is partly to blame for the $35 insulin, but he says it’s all his fault. In fact, experts say that the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions affect more than 3 million people, while his administration’s program that gave $35 insulin to Medicare recipients helped about 800,000 people.
