Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., September 20, 2024.
Jim Vondruska | Reuters
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to announce new campaign proposals focused on boosting U.S. manufacturing in a Wednesday speech at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, according to a senior campaign official.
The proposals are part of a broader effort to frame Harris as a partner, not an antagonist, to the business community, said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a speech that is not yet public.
Harris’ address will outline a “pragmatic” economic philosophy rooted in capitalism, innovation and an understanding of government’s limitations, rather than one “bound by ideology,” the official said.
The vice president will attempt to present her openness to the private sector as a means of growing the middle class, which has so far been the focal point of her nascent economic platform.
The speech will serve as a direct counterpoint to attacks from Harris’ Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, who has been working to define the former senator from California as the “Democrats’ radical left candidate” and a threat to the U.S. economy.
“If Kamala Harris gets four more years, she will deindustrialize the United States and destroy our country,” Trump said at an event in Savannah, Ga. on Tuesday, where he also rolled out new manufacturing proposals.
During his Georgia speech, Trump said if he were elected to a second term, he would introduce an expanded tax credit for research and development expenses, appoint a specialized “manufacturing ambassador” and impose hardline tariffs on imports, which he said would incentivize domestic production.
In her rebuttal on Wednesday, Harris also plans to highlight her middle class upbringing and her political resume, the campaign official said.
She will point to her two terms as California Attorney General, during which she collaborated with companies to manage privacy concerns about early mobile apps. Harris will also draw on her work as vice president to deliver more capital to community banks and small businesses.
For most of her eight week-old presidential campaign, Harris’ economic pitch has dovetailed neatly with President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Harris has focused on lowering the costs of food, housing and childcare, in part by accusing corporate America of “price gouging,” or manipulating and inflating consumer prices to far exceed producers’ costs, resulting in soaring profit margins that are untethered from productivity.
In August, Harris went so far as to propose a federal ban on so-called price gouging in the food and grocery sectors.
But that idea was panned by economists from across the political spectrum, who argued that little evidence exists to suggest that corporate price fixing is a primary driver of high prices.
Over the past several weeks, Harris has softened her rhetoric toward corporate America.
Last Wednesday, for example, in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Harris condemned price gouging, but quickly clarified that only a handful of corporations actually engage in it.
“Some corporations, and it’s very few of them that do this, but they jack up prices to make it more difficult for desperate people to just get by,” Harris said.
Wednesday’s speech could be the latest step in Harris’ tone shift, with less of Biden’s corporate scolding, and more of his industrial policy goals.
The campaign official noted, however, that Harris will also make clear that she is “unafraid to hold bad actors accountable if she needs to.”
With just 41 days until Election Day and voters in several states already casting early ballots, the Harris campaign sees her Pittsburgh address as an opportunity to continue chipping away at Trump’s longstanding edge with voters when it comes to the economy.
Recent polls suggest Harris’ efforts on this front are already bearing fruit.
The Financial Times-Michigan Ross September poll of 1,002 registered voters found Harris with a slim two-percentage point lead over Trump on the economy.
The poll was taken in the two days following the first Harris-Trump presidential debate on Sept. 10
Harris’ slight two-point advantage was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, but reflected Harris catching up to her Republican opponent.
Several other high quality polls conducted after the debate show Harris narrowing Trump’s advantage with voters on economic issues by double digits, including ones from AP-NORC, NBC News and Fox News.