(NewsNation) — Concerns over the economy, inflation and personal finances remain at the top of American voters’ minds a little more than two months before the 2024 presidential election.
The latest Gallup polling shows that 44% of Americans view economic issues as the “most important problem” facing the U.S. right now. Americans are facing rising costs, with rent and electricity up nearly 10% or more since June 2022, and car insurance rates have surged nearly 40%, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ polling numbers surged coming out of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August and began to level out recently against her competitor former President Donald Trump with the two nearly tying in all major swing states.
With less than a month to go until Election Day, how do Harris’ proposed economic policies differ from those of Trump, the Republican nominee?
The latest monthly Financial Times/University of Michigan Ross Business School poll shows Harris with a “razor-thin” edge over Trump on the economy. The poll showed the vice president gaining an advantage in this category over the former president.
Ahead of the 2024 election, NewsNation is committed to covering the issues that matter most to voters so they can make the most informed choices possible at the polls. Here is how the leading candidates’ policies compare on key voter issues, including those dealing with the economy and personal finance matters.
Inflation
Trump
- Promised “lower taxes, bigger paychecks, and more jobs for American workers” by enacting universal baseline tariffs that “reward domestic production” and tax foreign companies.
- Said he would lower interest rates.
- Claimed to have achieved the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years — 3.5% with 6.4 million added jobs before the pandemic.
- During his presidency, federal debt held by the public rose from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion, influenced by Trump’s tax cuts, particularly his slashes to the corporate tax rate, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck project.
Harris
- Harris’ plan for the economy includes tax increases for the wealthy and measures against price gouging.
- Shortly after taking office as vice president for Biden, the administration signed the American Rescue Plan, a $2 trillion stimulus package that delivered checks to Americans, boosted unemployment insurance benefits, and expanded the child tax credit.
- Inflation peaked at a four-decade high of 9% in summer 2022 but has since receded to around 3.5%.
- Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, which invested in clean energy that the White House estimates created 117,000 jobs and will reduce Americans’ energy costs by as much as 9% by 2030.
- Harris has said inflation was a high priority for the administration. “The President and our administration’s probably highest priority is bringing down the price of gas and cost of living,” Harris said.
- During her time as a senator, Harris tried to get a bill passed where tax credits up to $6,000 would be available for middle- and low-income households.
Taxes
Trump
- Trump has called for an end to personal income tax in exchange for a 10% tariff on all imported goods and a 60% or higher tariff on all Chinese imports.
- Trump calls for a 37% tax for top earners (down from 39%)
- Many of the tax credits and other items included in Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 are set to expire in December 2025. While Trump has called for extensions on the tax credits, estimates recently released by the Congressional Budget Office show that extending the credits would, in 2024 dollars, cost $3.2 trillion over 10 years and $10.3 trillion over 30 years.
- Trump said at a rally in June that he favors eliminating taxes on income on tips.
- Trump has called for the elimination of taxes on Social Security income
- Trump has called for a federal child tax credit for families with newborn children
- Trump, whose 2017 legislation permanently cut the corporate tax from 35% down to 21%, has called for the corporate tax rate to be lowered to 15% should he be elected.
Harris
- Harris has proposed an opportunity economy that focuses on the middle class, which includes tax relief for more than 100 million middle-class and lower-income families. Harris has not provided specifics on her plan but said that Trump’s proposed elimination of taxes in favor of taxes would be devastating to the middle class.
- Harris calls for a 44% tax rate for top earners (up from 39%)
- Like Trump, Harris says she would favor the elimination of taxes on income that comes from tips
- Harris has called for an expanded child tax credit that would be worth up to $6,000 in total tax relief for families with newborn children, according to CNBC.
- Harris has called for the corporate tax rate to jump from 21% to 28%, which the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates an increase to 28% would reduce the federal budget by around $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
Student Loans
Trump
- The former president has widely criticized President Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness for nearly 4.8 million Americans, referring to the plan as a “vile publicity stunt.” Trump has characterized the Biden program as illegal and says it is not fair to those who paid their college debts in full. According to federal estimates, outstanding education debt nationally stands at $1.6 trillion, with 1 in 6 Americans carrying college debt.
- As president, Trump called for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education’s existing loan forgiveness programs. That includes the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan, which benefits many military members, public defenders, first responders and others.
- In 2019, Trump signed an executive order that allowed federal student loans to be forgiven for permanently disabled veterans.
- Trump has vowed to roll back Biden’s tax forgiveness programs if elected. That could include Biden’s Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which bases loan repayment plans on an individual’s income.
- Republicans have introduced a bill that would require this year’s forms related to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to be released in October rather than December.
Harris
- As Biden’s vice president, Harris has supported the forgiveness of more than $160 billion in student loans.
- Harris also backed Biden’s call for the forgiveness of between $10,000 and $20,000 for every loan borrower before that proposal was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since then, Biden has introduced an alternate plan that would forgive the loans of those who have been paying down their college debts for 20 years. Other borrowers could see at least $5,000 of their debt forgiven under the plan.
- Before her time as vice president, Harris filed charges as California’s attorney general against a for-profit system of colleges for targeting low-income Californians. She also joined a coalition of attorneys general who urged federal education officials to provide loan repayment relief to college borrowers because of the dishonest practices of for-profit schools, USA Today reported.
Credit Card Debt
Trump
- With the nation’s credit card debt at a record $1.13 trillion, Trump has vowed to “fix the problem” by tackling inflation and other economic issues that the former president puts at the feet of the Biden-Harris administration.
- Said he set a ceiling for credit card interest rates.
- In 2018, Trump rolled back portions of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed into law in 2010 by former President Barack Obama, which created stricter regulations for banks of a certain size. If Trump is elected in November, the further loosening of regulations could lead to fewer regulations for credit card companies, which experts believe could result in higher interest rates and consumer fees, Yahoo! Finance reported. Supporters of the continued loosening of regulations argue that the measure could increase credit availability for more Americans.
Harris
Without offering many specifics, Harris has pledged to make housing, groceries and other everyday necessities more affordable for more Americans.
Harris proposed eliminating medical debt from the credit reports of more than 15 million Americans. Doing so, the campaign said, would improve credit scores by more than 20 points, which could improve people’s chances of securing mortgages, according to Harris’ campaign.
Interest Rates
Trump
- Trump has vowed to cut interest rates should he again be elected president. He said in a news conference that he would bring energy way down, interest rates down, and inflation way down.”
- The former president suggested in early August that the commander-in-chief should have a say on interest rates. He then backed off those comments, clarifying his comments to say that the president should be talking about interest rates “like anybody else.”
- Some Republicans have pushed for legislation that would allow the Federal Reserve to set interest rates independently.
Harris
- Harris has said that she would respect the Federal Reserve’s independence if elected in November and responded to Trump’s comments by saying that she would “never interfere in the decisions that the Fed makes.”
- Harris has referred to a July jump in U.S. unemployment that affected the global stock market as “turbulence” and said that it seemed to have “settled itself.” Harris said she would be interested in seeing what decisions the Fed makes. The Fed lowered interest rates in early October by half a percentage point, something it hasn’t done in over four years.
- Rather than trying to affect the decision-making of the Fed, Harris has pledged to focus on the economy and what needs to happen to bring costs down and strengthen the economy.
Real Estate
Trump
- Trump has claimed that a crackdown on migrants who have crossed the U.S. southern border illegally and those who are living here will drastically improve the housing market for Americans and lower home prices.
- Trump has also vowed to protect single-family zoning as a way of fending off developers who are looking to lower housing costs by increasing housing density, NBC News has reported.
- Trump has also pledged to lower mortgage rates and has criticized Democrats’ plans for affordable housing, saying that the party will create “a war in the suburbs.” He has targeted Harris’ housing plan, claiming that there is no way the vice president can pay for what she is proposing.
- Trump also said he would look into opening up federal land for home construction that would benefit potential homeowners who can’t afford housing at current costs.
Harris
- The Democratic nominee’s housing plan calls for the construction of 3 million new homes over the next four years that would then be available to either rent or buy.
- Harris has also pledged to introduce a first-ever tax incentive for homebuilders who sell homes to first-time buyers.
- The Harris plan also calls for first-time buyers to receive $25,000 in federal assistance to purchase a home.
- Harris has also called for the removal of local zoning laws that restrict the availability of homes and proposed doubling available funding to $40 billion, which would encourage local units of government to remove restrictive regulations, ABC News reported.