This is the second in the series of posts on the recent Trump/Harris debate; the first post, available here, and a transcript is available here, focuses on a variation of the classic Reagan line, "Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?". Kamala Harris basically sidestepped the question and delivered a number of rehearsed soundbites and Trump responded. I discussed the first exchange in detail, but before resuming the debate, I want make some points neither debater addressed, at least in specifics,
Harris talks about building an "opportunity economy", not much explanation of why this is necessary in an economy where they promote record low unemployment, a sequence of monthly job gains, etc. It's almost as if she's trying to distance herself as an incumbent from herself as a purported change agent. She seems to be identifying with a leftist view of a zero-sum economy where the wealthy get richer at the expense of the exploited masses. (Note: the official unemployment rate is based on a subjective assessment of the labor force. Long-term unemployed may no longer be included in the labor force. Also note that part-time work "counts", say if your employer reduces your paid hours from 40 to 32. Also some full-time workers may take a second (or more) part-time job to make ends meet in an inflation-bound economy.)
One statistic of importance is economic growth; outside of rebound statistics after the 2020 COVID economic shutdowns, is slow. In part, we know in part this is due to excess national debt relative to GDP. Biden has added nearly the same amount of national debt as Trump ($7.8T), A chart I embedded in the prior post showed Biden at 2,2% below the 2.3% of Bush 43, Obama and Trump, all well below the post WWII trend of 3.15%. Now look at the above chart of inflation-adjusted median household income. It wasn't until last year for household income to reach its 2019's high under Trump. What about recent data? We have seen a steady rise in unemployment; if you look at BLS Aug 2023-2024 seasonally adjusted data (Table A-9), you'll see the number of full-time positions are down year-over-year while the number of part-time jobs is up; whether we are talking about workers losing paid work hours or having to take on an extra job, Biden/Kamalanomics has serious challenges. White-collar jobs are down, job listings are down, and paid work hours are down, It's not just that; but inflation seems to have bottomed above the Fed's 2% target and it's possible the recent half-point interest cut could reignite inflation with a weaker dollar, house prices and mortgage rates have priced most prospective buyers out of the market. Consumers have maxed out their credit, are cutting down on nonessential purchases, and are even putting grocery purchases at Walmart on credit plans. Dollar stores are struggling as inflation challenges their business aimed at lower-income consumers and larger retailers like Walmart and Target are eyeing their market niche. Harris' tax-and-spend policies won't work.
DAVID MUIR (moderator): We are going to get to immigration and border security during this debate. But I would like to let Vice President Harris respond on the economy here.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I would love to. Let's talk about what Donald Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess. What we have done and what I intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations and the hopes of the American people. But I'm going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling. What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again. I believe very strongly that the American people want a president who understands the importance of bringing us together knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us. And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.
COMMENT: Look. I'm Never Trump, but most of this is a partisan, personal attack Democrats have had a history of trying to scapegoat their predecessors. Obama must have spent his first 3 years bashing Bush, but we ended up experiencing the slowest economic recovery in recent American history. It's one thing to identity specific policies and actions of Trump, a constructive critique if you will. This response is just unoriginal trite predictable rubbish.
First is Harris' false claim "Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression". It is true unemployment hit 14.8% in April 2020 during the early pandemic under state/local shutdowns; Trump was not responsible for the pandemic or for the state/local shutdowns. In fact, he left the Biden Administrator with multiple approved COVID-19 vaccines which stabilized the work environment issues. She fails to tell you that by summer unemployment was back down to 4.2% and for 2020 as a whole it was 6.7%. This stupid political whore actually sought to compare Trump to the Depression let's point out that April 2020 rate was lower than all ANNUAL rates from 1931-1939, except for 1937 (14.3%). Trump's 6.7% , on the other hand was exceeded by Obama (2009-2013), Nixon/Ford (1974-6), Carter (1980), Reagan (1981-5), Bush 41 (1991-1992), and Bush 43 (2008)..
She's bashing Trump for the pandemic. (Note I have been highly critical of Trump's leadership, especially his discouraging testing, and he should gave gotten the private sector involved early test development. I wish they had quarantined returning American travelers at the outbreak of the pandemic) But let's be clear: there was a difference with this pandemic/epidemic: it spread by bioaerosols, not just respiratory splatter.. The US has dealt with many public health issues: smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid, 1918 H1N1, diphtheria, polio, H2N2, measles, cryptosporidiosism, 2009 H1N1, .whooping cough, and HIV.. In fact, the Biden/Harris Administration itself has mishandled the COVID crisis; SCOTUS shut down Biden's unlawful attempt to mandate relevant vaccines at large businesses. His vaccine mandate for the military reduced active military and adversely affected recruitment efforts In fact, under Biden's leadership vaccination update ratios have dropped from from around 75% to 22% in last fall's update. Finally, social media companies like Meta/Facebook worked with the White House to censor "misinformation".
Harris is trying to blame Trump for J6 This "attack on democracy" is overstated. She also compared it to the Civil War.. First of all, the historically illiterate Harris doesn't realize that Lincoln invaded the South, which was unconstitutionally against the sovereignty of said states. The Confederacy fought a primarily defensive war. There was no attempt to overthrow the Union government, to seize DC although some Virginia battles were in the outskirts of DC. Don't get me wrong; I thought Trump's post-election 2020 meltdown was an unprecedented stain in American history, a sin against our tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. There is no excuse for property damage, assaulting Capitol police or others. I do think Trump had his day in court to contest, but his attempts to flip election results in states and to try to manipulate results through Pence beyond the twelfth amendment were unconstitutional. I think J6 was mostly bad security policy. I know there had been rumors of protests leading up to J6, and it didn't take a genius to guess why Trump was holding a DC rally the morning of Congressional ratification of electoral college results. It's a mystery to me why security wasn't upgraded; I would have and I didn't like either 2020 candidate. I don't know what Trump was hoping for; he didn't have the votes to stop Biden's election ratification. I think he was just throwing up a Hail Mary pass on behalf of his minions. Trump's mob did not use deadly force.. This wasn't like the British invasion of DC during the War of 1812 or even the Whiskey Rebellion. The Capitol was secured within 2 hours of National Guard arrival. There is no evidence of military coup supporting Trump.
Harris has hypocritically made Project 2025 a bogeyman. It is not a Trump/GOP document. Let's quote from the original source:
Project 2025 is a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to abolish the Deep State and return government to the people. Project 2025 is not partisan, nor is it secret. Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign, in any capacity. It was stood up in 2022, before any major candidate announced a campaign, to assist the next conservative president.
The cited source debunks many policy myths made against it by leftist propagandists like Harris. Yes, it supports Trump's border control and deporting unauthorized (note I disagree with this) and some distrust of the "deep state", i.e., the unaccountable federal bureaucracy. Let me note, though, Trump is no conservative, was not a party to the agenda and in fact has distanced himself from the plan.
Note, for instance, conservatives generally don't like trade wars: "The Trump-Biden tariffs have come at a cost to Americans, amounting to an average annual tax increase of $625 per U.S. household, according to the Tax Foundation."
The last thing I want to point out is that progressive organizations have published their own blueprints, e.g., American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS).: see here, for instance
DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I'll give you a minute here to respond.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Number one, I have nothing to do, as you know and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it, purposely. I'm not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do -- everybody knows I'm an open book. Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before. We had the greatest economy. We got hit with a pandemic. And the pandemic was, not since 1917 where 100 million people died has there been anything like it? We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic. We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. We made ventilators for the entire world. We got gowns. We got masks. We did things that nobody thought possible. And people give me credit for rebuilding the military. They give me credit for a lot of things. But not enough credit for the great job we did with the pandemic. But the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs. These were jobs, bounce back. And it bounced back and it went to their benefit. But I was the one that created them. They know it and so does everybody else.
As early as Feb. 6, four weeks after the genome of the virus was published, the WHO had shipped 250,000 diagnostic tests to 70 laboratories around the world, the agency said.By comparison, the CDC at that time was shipping about 160,000 tests to labs across the nation — but then the manufacturing troubles were discovered, and most would be deemed unusable because they produced confusing results. Over the next three weeks, only about 200 of those tests sent to labs would be used, according to CDC statistics.
- Widespread testing was delayed and remains inadequate
- The U.S. was unable to contain the spread of the virus
- The country lacks essential supplies and equipment
- Messaging on the virus has been inconsistent and inaccurate
- Federal and state agencies failed to coordinate their efforts
DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So, Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it's all about tax breaks for the richest people. I am offering what I describe as an opportunity economy, and the best economists in our country, if not the world, have reviewed our relative plans for the future of America. What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a recession. You just have to look at where we are and where we stand on the issues. And I'd invite you to know that Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.
COMMENT: Trump has a plan but is not committed to Project 2025 which Harris is disingenuously trying to link to him. Here is what Wharton School actually said about Harris' claims:
.'We did not find a positive impact on the economy from her plan in any future year. The Trump plan does increase GDP for a few years but lowers by the end of the 10-year budget window,' a spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) said in a statement.
What Goldman was responding to had more to do with Trump's anti-growth trade and immigration policies, as in fact what I have separately stressed. They also think Trump's expanded tariffs would exacerbate inflation and Harris' lower-income tax breaks would leave those income brackets somewhat better off. I have not seen Goldman's comprehensive assessment, but I'm absolutely convinced that surtaxing high earners and her unconstitutional unrealized gains taxation not only won't reach revenue targets; raising upper income taxes and business taxes tend to impede job-generating investments and economic growth. Not to mention we already have a baked-in $22T deficit over the coming decade. No, centrally planned economies do not improve over the free market, and Trump has made a point that under his policies, all workers benefitted: strong job growth and higher incomes, not Harris' zero-sum model.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That's just a sound bite. They gave her that to say. Look, I went to the Wharton School of Finance and many of those professors, the top professors, think my plan is a brilliant plan, it's a great plan. It's a plan that's going to bring up our worth, our value as a country. It's going to make people want to be able to go and work and create jobs and create a lot of good, solid money for our -- for our country. And just to finish off, she doesn't have a plan. She copied Biden's plan. And it's like four sentences, like run-Spot-run. Four sentences that are just oh, we'll try and lower taxes. She doesn't have a plan. Take a look at her plan. She doesn't have a plan.
COMMENT: It's true that Kamalanomics is built on a foundation of Bidenomics. She has clearly identified some distinctive elements of her "opportunity economy" : things like an expanded child care credit, a subsidy fir first-time home buyers, a tax break for new businesses, etc. This is an example of incompetent debate preparation. This is a golden opportunity to indict the failures of Bidenomics or the problems with Kamalanomics. He's more interested in hyping his plan than critically analyzing others. And, for the record, here's what Wharton really said:
The analysis comes days after the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania simulated the economic plans for both candidates. They estimated that Harris’ proposals would be better for lower- and middle-income families and add trillions of dollars less to the national debt than Trump’s would. Trump’s plans, however, would be better for the top 0.1% of earners, who would see an increased after-tax income of $376,910 in 2026.
DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is a essentially a national sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said that you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on good coming into this country. As you know many economists say that with tariffs at that level costs are then passed onto the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly four thousand dollars a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They aren't gonna have higher prices what's gonna have and who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries and you know if she doesn't like 'em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration. We are gonna take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. I had no inflation, virtually no inflation, they had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country because I've never seen a worse period of time. People can't go out and buy cereal bacon or eggs or anything else. These the people of our country are absolutely dying with what they've done. They've destroyed the economy and all you have to do it look at a poll. The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great that their economy was terrible.
COMMENT: Trump is an economic illiterate in denial. No, China did not pay for the $79B of Trump tariffs. What Trump should have noted is that Biden/Harris added another increase of $3.6B Here's what the Tax Foundation says about the Trump/Biden/Harris tariffs:
We estimate the Trump-Biden tariffs will reduce long-run GDP by 0.2 percent, the capital stock by 0.1 percent, and employment by 142,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
Altogether, the trade war policies currently in place add up to $79 billion in tariffs based on trade levels at the time of tariff implementation and excluding behavioral and dynamic effects.
Before accounting for behavioral effects, the $79 billion in higher tariffs amounts to an average annual tax increase on US households of $625. Based on actual revenue collections data, trade war tariffs have directly increased tax collections by $200 to $300 annually per US household, on average. Both estimates understate the cost to US households because they do not factor in the lost output, lower incomes, and loss in consumer choice the tariffs have caused.
Candidate Trump has proposed significant tariff hikes as part of his presidential campaign; we estimate that if imposed, his proposed tariff increases would hike taxes by another $524 billion annually and shrink GDP by at least 0.8 percent, the capital stock by 0.7 percent, and employment by 684,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Our estimates do not capture the effects of retaliation, nor the additional harms that would stem from starting a global trade war.
Academic and governmental studies find the Trump-Biden tariffs have raised prices and reduced output and employment, producing a net negative impact on the US economy.
Trump tries to blame inflation on Biden/Harris. The fact is, Trump himself named Jerome Powell as Fed chief. The Fed treated rising inflation as transient and kept rates near zero, resulting in spiking inflation. Also, Trump signed trillions in pandemic spending; a lot of stimulus dollars were banked in the short term and spent in the Biden years. The point is, Trump was part of the inflation story; there are lags in national policy
DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris I do want to ask for your response and you heard what the president said there because the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place so how do you respond?
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, let's be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars, you wanna talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century. Which means focusing on the details of what that requires, focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing in American based technology so that we win the race on A.I. and quantum computing, focusing on what we need to do to support America's workforce, so that we don't end up having the on the short end of the stick in terms of workers' rights. But what Donald Trump did let's talk about this with COVID, is he actually thanked President XI for what he did during COVID. Look at his tweet. "Thank you, President XI," exclamation point. When we know that XI was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.
COMMENT: Harris here is trying to hype the Biden protectionist industrial policy on chips. (We libertarians oppose futile, ineffectual industrial policy and their crony capitalist partners, economic sanctions and other corrupt abuses of power.) No, Harris isn't going to out-bash Trump on China; this is the same guy who started a trade war and hasn't backed off. Yes, Trump's schtick includes flattering autocratic leaders. He sees his style as more effective than Biden's more confrontational approach.. He thinks his tough trade policies are valuable negotiation chips The GOP sees Hunter Biden's business connections to China are corrupt and undermine the credibility of the Biden/Harris Administration.
DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I'll let you respond.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First of all, they bought their chips from Taiwan. We hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have. I don't say her because she has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She's going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She's gone to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she'd change it. And it will be the end of our country. She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. But when you look at what she's done to our country and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly where it's I believe 21 million people, not the 15 that people say, and I think it's a lot higher than the 21. That's bigger than New York state. Pouring in. And just look at what they're doing to our country. They're criminals. Many of these people coming in are criminals. And that's bad for our economy too. You mentioned before, we'll talk about immigration later.
Well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. They have and she has destroyed our country with policy that's insane. Almost policy that you'd say they have to hate our country.
COMMENT: First of all, Harris' and Trump's understanding of the global semiconductor industry is at best limited and/or incompetent. China is the fifth leading semiconductor producer behind Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the US; note as the global manufacturer leader, it is the biggest consumer of chips and has autarchic/self-reliance goals (not unlike the Biden special interest chips bill) in a goal to capture 25% of the market. by 2030. The US has about 12% of global capacity but has about 46% market share (from US factories in other countries, etc.) As to Trump's response that China gets the chips it needs from Taiwan, it is likely, but Biden export controls limit US/ally assistance in developing its own capacity. Note that I seem to recall China graduates something like 3-4 times the engineers as the US, and Trump's immigration policies impede our ability to remain competitive. I've seen signs that Trump is more sensitive to allowing foreign student graduates to stay. :
China reportedly has a self-sufficiency that is closer to 16 percent and still imports over $400 billion worth of semiconductors.
Trump's immigration numbers, mostly from suspect anti-immigrant sources, are suspect. The standard estimate is 11M+ unauthorized aliens based on Census datasets. (I have seen a Yale study that maintains there has been a consistent under count, that the "real" numbers are probably twice that. I haven't seen enough validation on their underlying mathematical models, but the talking point doesn't validate Trump's fearmongering rhetoric.) Here is the most relevant chart via Statistica:
Before discussing this trend in more depth, notice Trump's obsession on border crossings obfuscates that some 40-odd% of unauthorized aliens entered the US legally and are visa overstays:
A 2017 Homeland Security report found that the number of “known got aways"— an estimate Border Patrol agents developed — fell from 600,000 in 2006 to roughly 106,000 in 2016.
In contrast, Homeland Security found that 700,000 foreigners who came by plane or ship overstayed their visa from October 2016 to September 2017. The department has not consistently tracked how many foreigners overstayed their visas in recent years.
Visa overstays are making up a larger share of immigrants coming to the U.S. illegally every year, according to the Center for Migration Studies, a New York-based think tank . Overstays accounted for only 34 percent of illegal entries into the U.S. in 2004 but by 2014 they made up 66 percent of new entries. The study estimates 42 percent of the 11 million immigrants believed to be living in the U.S. illegally as of 2014 had overstayed their visa.
Noe look at the trend line; unauthorized alien count peaked near the end of Bush's second term. (One should note Bush heavily favored immigration reform.). In fact, there was a dip, a net outflow, during the Great Recession, under 11M under Obama. Notice during the remainder of Obama through Trump's years, the toral never reached the 2007 peak, and it broke below 11M again, during the pandemic recession. But Trump ran his first campaign under an exaggerated surge under Deporter-in-Chief Obama. and as Cato Institute pointed out Trump policies didn't affect the overall numbers, except he sharply cut LEGAL immigration that Republicans pay lip service to. In fact, Trump's war on immigration harms economic growth in a rapid aging labor force.
