Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote and political reform director at New America. You can reach him on X @StevenHill1776.
There is no question that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are offering two very different visions of America and the economy. But amidst all the campaign noise and insults from the two sides, it becomes difficult to separate what’s real from what’s campaign bluster.
As you head out to vote, consider these summaries of the candidates’ positions on key economic indicators. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but I like to keep what I call an “everyday people” scorecard, to rate which candidate will help regular Main Street people more.
Lower prices
Of course both candidates have said they will bring down prices. That’s the ultimate campaign promise. But which candidate, if any, has a credible plan to do that?
One of Trump’s signature campaign promises involves imposing a 10 percent to 20 tariff on all imports. Most people assume this is targeted at China, but that’s not really true. For example, the United States’ largest trade partner, by far, is the European Union’s $16 trillion economy. The $1.3 trillion in trade between America and the E.U. is nearly twice as large as the $758 billion in trade with China.
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If Trump slaps a 20 percent tariff on every product or service coming from the E.U., Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, that’s going to increase prices, in some cases dramatically so, according to every credible economist — Republicans and Democrats.
Meanwhile Harris, who says lowering prices will be her “day one priority,” mostly has said she will use the power of the Oval Office to go after bad companies in the grocery, health care and energy sectors that are price gouging consumers and hiking the cost of everyday products. The rhetoric sounds strong, but can a president really control prices?
The Biden administration has used political pressure on grocery chains and other companies, as well as the most vigorous anti-monopoly enforcement in decades. Just recently, there’s been evidence that some of this pressure has been working, as grocery chains and other businesses have finally begun lowering prices.
But the price of gasoline still remains historically high, and there are likely limitations on how much a president can do. Still, score this one for Harris because at the very least she won’t be driving prices higher like Trump will with his tariffs.
Cut or preserve Social Security
Trump has long said he would protect Social Security, and mostly did so during his four years as president. But last March, in an interview on CNBC, he suggested that he was open to cutting Social Security and Medicare. Will the real Donald Trump please stand up?
As Election Day drew closer, Trump trumped even himself. He has generously proposed a tax cut on Social Security payouts to recipients. But be careful what you ask for — economic experts say Trump’s proposal would quickly bankrupt the entire Social Security program, possibly in only six years. That’s because the taxes paid on Social Security income received by recipients is an important source of money that keeps the system’s trust fund fully loaded and stable.
The Democrats have always been the staunchest defenders of Social Security, compared to Republican leaders in Congress who have stated their intention to cut these “entitlements,” as they call them. That’s because Social Security is, for many seniors, their only source of income and the most successful anti-poverty program the U.S. has ever created. Harris holds a traditional Democratic viewpoint, which is to save and defend Social Security well into the future. She says she will stabilize Social Security from its projected deficit in the 2030s by making very wealthy people and big corporations pay their fair share in taxes to shore up Social Security’s finances.
The question of how progressive our tax system should be is certainly a topic for debate. But Trump is making a campaign promise that he cannot keep without endangering Social Security itself. Score this one for Harris.
Reinvigorate the economy
Trump promises a “manufacturing renaissance” if elected, and levying tariffs on imports while proposing to cut corporate taxes and easing regulations is a key part of his plan to increase manufacturing jobs. That protectionist policy would shield U.S. companies from foreign competition, at least in theory. Trump’s plan is, in many ways, a redo of what he did during his presidency, but the effectiveness on the economy and job creation is difficult to gauge because the pandemic caused the economy to drop off the cliff.
He also wants to enact a large tax cut, like he did in his presidency, though evidence suggests that the tax cut did not provide a significant boost for the economy because it mostly went to wealthy people who did not really spend the tax cut in order to stimulate the economy.
Harris aims to close corporate tax loopholes and, like the Biden administration, use a targeted industrial policy to invest billions of dollars into manufacturing and throw government support behind the production of critical goods, such as semiconductor chips and other key industries. Harris has called for a $100 billion investment in manufacturing to prioritize "industries of the future," such as carbon-efficient steel production and data centers for artificial intelligence.
Both candidates have plans to boost jobs and manufacturing, and both plans have their pluses and minuses. I’d score this one even between Trump and Harris.
Affordable health care and prescription drugs
Harris’ primary policy for bringing down health care costs is reducing the price of prescription drugs. As vice president, Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate for a law that requires the government to negotiate prices for many Medicare-covered drugs. She also was a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, which has provided health care for millions of Americans who did not have it.
As president, Trump tried to repeal the ACA multiple times. He has promised to replace the ACA with a system that is better and “far less expensive” but he has offered no details and when he was president he promised the same thing and never delivered, even though he had GOP majorities in both houses of Congress for half of his temr.
Harris has more of a plan, and that plan is based on previous policy that had some success. Harris with an edge here.
Immigration’s impact on the economy
This subject has garnered the most headlines, with Trump calling for mass deportations of millions of immigrants, and Harris criticizing Trump for killing a bipartisan bill in February 2024 that would have put 1,500 more agents on the border and funded greater drug and human trafficking enforcement.
But what’s the actual impact of immigration on the economy, and what do the candidates say about that? Studies show that large increases in immigration have a tendency, as Trump and others have said, to lower wages in blue-collar jobs where many immigrants work, but the effect is usually temporary. Over the longer term, new workers allow employers to expand their businesses and grow the economic pie. Immigrants usually work different jobs than native-born workers, often resulting in lower prices for food, child care, house cleaning and construction. Over time, immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in services.
So Trump’s massive deportation, or his promised resumption of his immigrant travel ban from his first term, could very well increase prices and inflation, and could lead to labor shortages in certain service sectors. It might lift the wages in blue-collar occupations, but legally and logistically it would be difficult to realize on a mass scale. So Trump’s proposal may be unrealistic and more of a campaign pledge to win votes.
Harris, as a former attorney general in California who had to prosecute illegal immigration and cross-border drug and human traffickers, has primarily said she would sign the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump killed. Neither candidate has put forward a credible or realistic plan that could be expected to reduce migration flows significantly. Even if they did, that could have negative impacts on the economy and cause inflation to rise again.
I’m scoring this one a wash.
There are many more economic issues that could be evaluated and scored. I picked out ones that I thought are most on the minds and lips of everyday Americans.
On this particular set of economic issues, when you get past all the campaign bluster and each candidate’s distortions of the other’s record, I would give the edge to Harris. She likely would provide better stewardship for the national economy than Trump.
