Kamala Harris and Donald Trump supply two starkly totally different visions for the nation with a lot at stake – from pocketbook financial points and reproductive rights to the power of the nation’s world alliances and existential questions on the way forward for American democracy and the planet.
As they compete for the White Home, each candidates have laid out their plans in speeches, marketing campaign adverts and media interviews. Most of it quantities to a want checklist, sketched out in broad strokes and missing concrete particulars about how they might be carried out or paid for. Numerous Trump’s proposals increase authorized questions, whereas a few of Harris’s would most likely require Democratic management of Congress.
Kamala Harris insurance policies on the financial system
On the highest situation for voters this election, Harris is tied to the Biden administration’s document on the financial system – for higher or worse.
Inflation: Whereas the general financial image has brightened in current months, Harris has mentioned she agrees with Individuals that costs are “nonetheless too excessive” after a number of years of serious inflation. Harris says she needs to construct up the “alternative financial system,”, centered on the center class, with plans to fight value gouging, enhance housing improvement, help first-time homebuyers and develop tax credit for folks.
Taxes: Harris has pledged to lower taxes for tens of tens of millions of middle- and low-income households, whereas saying she helps tax breaks for entrepreneurs and small enterprise house owners. She additionally backs a proposal championed by Trump to remove taxes on suggestions.
Commerce: Harris is anticipated to take care of the Biden administration’s strategy, counting on tariffs and export controls to spice up home competitiveness with China. On the marketing campaign path, she has additionally touted the Biden administration’s formidable investments in infrastructure and renewable power.
Donald Trump insurance policies on the financial system
Trump continues to tout his pre-pandemic document.
Inflation: A lot of Trump’s inflation-reduction plan hinges on his vow to slash power prices by increasing oil and gasoline drilling and deregulation, although economists say his plans for sweeping tariffs and mass deportations might really increase prices. He has additionally been extremely crucial of excessive rates of interest, the Federal Reserve’s major inflation-fighting software. Trump mentioned lately that he thinks the president ought to have a say in choices made by the Fed, which historically operates independently from politics.
Taxes: In a second time period, he has vowed to prolong and develop a set of tax cuts he signed into legislation in 2017, whereas pledging to chop the company tax price to fifteen% from 21% for corporations that make their merchandise within the US. He has additionally mentioned he would exempt Social Safety advantages, in addition to suggestions, from revenue taxes.
Commerce and tariffs: Trump has referred to as himself because the “tariff man”, casting it as an answer to the nation’s myriad financial issues, from revitalizing a sagging auto business to bringing down the excessive value of childcare. The previous president has steered blanket tariffs of 10% to twenty% on just about all imports, in addition to slapping tariffs of 60% – or extra – on items from China. He has mentioned he would ask Congress for the authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any nation that imposes one on the US.
Kamala Harris insurance policies on abortion
Harris was a vocal proponent of reproductive rights earlier than she grew to become the nominee, assailing Trump and Republicans for making a “healthcare disaster” that has led to the preventable deaths of girls looking for abortion care.
Roe v Wade and abortion bans: As a candidate, she has referred to as on Congress to cross laws to revive the protections of Roe v Wade, which the supreme courtroom overturned in 2022 and which in impact blocked states from banning abortion earlier than fetal viability, or about 24 weeks of being pregnant. As president, Harris has vowed she would veto any nationwide abortion ban.
IVF: Harris pledged to guard entry to contraception and different fertility therapies akin to in vitro fertilization (IVF). She has additionally touted efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to safeguard entry to medical abortion and shield girls who cross state traces to entry the process.
Donald Trump insurance policies on abortion
Trump has alternately bragged about his function appointing three supreme courtroom justices whose votes had been decisive in overturning Roe and complained that bans on abortion in Republican-controlled states could harm him electorally.
Roe vs Wade and abortion bans: Trump has mentioned abortion entry ought to be left to the states, and has vowed that as president he wouldn’t signal a nationwide abortion ban. (Weeks earlier than making that pledge, he refused to say whether or not he would veto such a ban.)
IVF: He has additionally mentioned that if he wins he would make IVF free for girls, although has supplied few specifics and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked laws that may shield the therapy.
Abortion drugs: Venture 2025, the notorious playbook of coverage proposals for the following conservative president, suggests utilizing a Nineteenth-century anti-vice legislation to ban the mailing of abortion drugs, which account for two-thirds of US abortions. As a result of this legislation is already on the books, a President Trump might implement it with out congressional motion.
Kamala Harris insurance policies on democracy
Harris, like Biden, views Trump as a direct risk to democracy. She has highlighted her function as a prosecutor to attract a distinction with Trump, who was discovered responsible of 34 felony counts in a New York hush-money case over his try to affect the result of the 2016 marketing campaign. He additionally faces a number of different circumstances associated to his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat and his dealing with of categorised paperwork. Harris has relied on anti-Trump Republicans to assist remind Individuals of Trump’s function inciting the lethal assault on Congress of 6 January 2021.
Reform: Harris has additionally mentioned that she is prepared to remove the filibuster to codify abortion rights, a reform many Democrats imagine would assist ease a number of the legislative gridlock in Congress.
Voting rights: As vice-president, she led the push to cross federal voting rights laws.
Donald Trump insurance policies on democracy
Election denialism: Trump has by no means stopped totally repeating the lie that his 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden was marred by fraud. He has refused to say whether or not he would settle for the outcomes of the 2024 election, suggesting that the one means his opponent might win is that if she cheated. He has additionally mentioned he would pardon defendants convicted for his or her roles within the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. Trump can be dealing with federal expenses over his try to overturn the outcomes of the election, together with his actions associated to the violent Capitol assault. Trump, who has signaled his intention to encompass himself with loyalists, has mentioned he would retaliate in opposition to his political opponents, threatening to make use of the justice division to prosecute Democratic attorneys, elections officers, donors and even voters. This could be a pointy break from Democratic norms in the US, the place federal legislation enforcement is meant to be apolitical.
Kamala Harris insurance policies on border safety and immigration
Harris has sought to flip the script on immigration, one in every of her greatest political vulnerabilities.
Border safety: Throughout a go to to the border in September, she laid out a plan to enact stricter penalties for individuals who try to assert asylum between lawful ports of entry. Arrests of individuals for crossing the southern border reached document ranges through the early years of the Biden administration, however have fallen sharply since he carried out an asylum clampdown. As vice-president, Harris was tasked with addressing the root causes of migration. Trump and Republicans blame her for the state of affairs on the border, describing it as overrun because of Biden’s overly lenient immigration insurance policies.
Immigration reform: However Harris says it was Trump who has refused to deal with the state of affairs by derailing a bipartisan Senate deal geared toward toughening the asylum processes and growing border assets. She has additionally referred to as for complete immigration reform, together with pathways to citizenship for undocumented folks, particularly those that had been dropped at the US as kids.
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Donald Trump insurance policies on border safety and immigration
Immigration is Trump’s signature situation. In a second time period, he has vowed to go a lot additional than he did 4 years in the past.
Deportation: He has promised to hold out the biggest home deportation operation in US historical past. He has mentioned he would reinstate a number of controversial insurance policies from his first time period, together with the Stay in Mexico program, Title 42 and a journey ban focusing on a number of Muslim-majority nations. He has vowed to rescind applications that defend undocumented folks from deportation, together with kids, whereas revoking the authorized standing of probably tons of of hundreds of immigrants within the US beneath the federal non permanent protected standing program. Trump has additionally steered he would finish birthright citizenship for the US-born kids of undocumented folks – a proposal that specialists say is unlikely to prevail in courtroom – and impose “ideological screenings” for immigrants.
Anti-immigrant sentiment: Past his coverage, Trump has used his rhetoric to stoke concern of immigrants, claiming that the nation was being “invaded” and amplifying rightwing lies about immigrant populations in locations like Springfield, Ohio, the place Haitians have turn out to be targets of threats and vitriol for the reason that former president repeated a false rumor concerning the group. He has additionally echoed Adolf Hitler, saying that immigrants coming to the US had been “poisoning the blood of our nation”.
Kamala Harris on international coverage
World alliances: Harris’s strategy to international coverage has hewed intently to the president’s, with an emphasis on sustaining the US’s world alliances, particularly Nato.
Russia-Ukraine warfare: She has totally aligned herself with the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost three years in the past, pledging unyielding help for the nation because it battles to repel Russian forces from its territory. Harris has repeatedly attacked Putin’s “brutality” and warned that Trump would drive Ukraine to “give up” to Russia.
Center East disaster: Within the Center East, Harris once more has been broadly supportive of the administration’s strategy to Israel’s widening warfare, which started in Gaza and now contains Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. Like Biden, Harris has referred to as for a ceasefire in Gaza in change for the discharge of hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Harris has mentioned the US will all the time defend Israel’s proper to defend itself, however has additionally been extra vocal in expressing empathy for the greater than 41,000 Palestinians killed through the yearlong battle that has deeply divided her occasion. She helps a two-state answer, with an impartial Palestinian state.
China: She has signaled a continuation of Biden’s tough-on-China strategy and has mentioned she would honor the US’s commitments to Taiwan.
Donald Trump on international coverage
Trump, who shares isolationist impulses, has repeatedly mentioned that the world was a extra peaceable place when he was in energy.
World alliances: He has lengthy been a skeptic of worldwide alliances. Nato continues to be a prime goal of his disdain – he as soon as mentioned he would “encourage” Russia to invade a member nation if it wasn’t paying sufficient. He has not dominated out withdrawing from Nato, and even steered he may step again from different alliances.
Russia-Ukraine warfare: With lots of his supporters against persevering with the stream of US help to Ukraine, Trump has vowed to “essentially re-evaluate” the nation’s strategy. He has claimed that he’ll finish the almost three-year warfare on his first day in workplace, however supplied no particulars on how he may accomplish this. His flattery of Vladimir Putin and sophisticated historical past with Ukraine – he was impeached in 2019 for withholding help as a method of pressuring his president for “grime” on Biden – recommend the proposal would most likely entail Ukraine giving up a few of its territory captured by Russia.
Center East disaster: Trump has lengthy solid himself as a champion of Israel, regardless of a protracted historical past of antisemitic remarks. Although he says he helps Israel’s mission, he has been crucial of its ways and has tangled with its chief, the rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At residence, he has advocated for an aggressive response to pro-Palestinian protests, suggesting he would strip international college students of their visas in the event that they categorical antisemitic or anti-American sentiment.
China: In a second time period, Trump has mentioned he would take a fair stronger stand in opposition to China, although he has praised its president, Xi Jinping, and has not mentioned whether or not he would ship troops if China invaded Taiwan.
Kamala Harris’s local weather and power insurance policies
Harris has mentioned unequivocally that the local weather disaster is attributable to human exercise and represents an existential risk to the nation and the planet.
Local weather applications: As vice-president, Harris solid the tie-breaking vote to cross the Biden-Harris administration’s signature Inflation Discount Act laws that marked the nation’s most important effort but to fight the local weather disaster. The legislation made main investments in renewable power as a part of the administration’s general goal to dramatically cut back the US’s planet-heating emissions by the top of the last decade. But it surely additionally expanded planet-heating fossil fuels – one thing Harris touted in her September debate with Trump – and beneath Biden, Harris additionally presided over record-high US oil and gasoline manufacturing.
Harris has walked again her help for the progressive Inexperienced New Deal proposal and a fracking ban. She is a proponent of electrical automobiles – although doesn’t help a mandate – and backs clean-energy tax credit, and has promoted local weather justice applications, centered on defending “frontline” communities from the impacts of the local weather disaster.
Donald Trump’s local weather and power insurance policies
Trump has questioned established local weather science, beforehand dismissing the local weather disaster as “legendary” and an “costly hoax”. He has additionally mentioned that the warming local weather is just not essentially accountable for making excessive climate occasions worse. On the marketing campaign path, he has summed up his place with the declaration: “Drill, child, drill.”
Environmental laws: As president, Trump claims he’ll prioritize clear air and water for Individuals. But he has additionally promised to proceed to roll again environmental laws, together with all the ones put in place by the Biden administration.
Oil and gasoline: In a Might assembly with oil bosses, he reportedly supplied to dismantle Biden’s environmental guidelines and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential marketing campaign. Throughout his first time period, he dismantled many environmental insurance policies, together with protections for clear air and water in addition to laws geared toward decreasing planet-warming emissions. He’s particularly against wind energy – falsely claiming wind generators kill birds, trigger most cancers and “drive the whales loopy”.
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