Kamala Harris promised Friday to “fight” for the middle class if she wins the US presidential election, contrasting her economic plans with those of her rival Donald Trump, whom the vice president accuses of serving the richest.
“Donald Trump is fighting for billionaires and big business. I will fight to give money back to middle- and working-class families,” promised the 59-year-old Democratic candidate during a trip to North Carolina (southeast).
His team had previously unveiled a program focused on purchasing power and described as “communist” by his Republican rival.
Kamala Harris has put forward some concrete measures: the construction of three million new homes to address the “shortage”, assistance for first-time home buyers, and a new birth tax credit of up to $6,000 for the first year of a child’s life.
It also aims to combat real estate speculation and discourage price inflation in the food sector, while capping the price of insulin and tackling the debts incurred by Americans to pay for their health care.
The Democrat was careful not to repeat the mistakes of Joe Biden, whose torch she took up.
“Devastating”
The Democratic president has spent his term boasting about his major investment plans and the good economic situation in the United States, but has never managed to articulate a convincing message in the face of the inflation that has hit the world’s largest economy.
Kamala Harris, on the contrary, insisted on the feelings of households faced with the high cost of living: “Too many people have the impression that no matter how hard they work, they can’t get by.”
The vice president, taking care of her image, spoke of her mother’s efforts to buy a house and recounted working at McDonald’s when she was a student to earn pocket money.
Everything to distinguish herself from the 78-year-old billionaire she will face at the polls on November 5, and whose economic projects she has lambasted.
Recalling that Donald Trump wanted to significantly increase customs duties, Kamala Harris judged that this was equivalent to “imposing a national tax on consumption” which would be “devastating”.
“That means higher prices on all your daily needs. A ‘Trump tax’ on gasoline, a ‘Trump tax’ on food, a ‘Trump tax’ on clothing…” she listed, assuring that her rival’s plan would cost an average family $3,900 per year.
Plagiarism
“Comrade Harris is all about communism!” former President Donald Trump counterattacked Friday.
The term obviously has a particularly strong pejorative connotation in the United States.
According to a University of Michigan poll released Friday, 41% of consumers believe the vice president is a better candidate for the economy, while 38% believe Donald Trump is the right choice in this area.
A setback for the Republican, a former businessman, who had always largely dominated Joe Biden in this type of opinion poll.
The Democrat had provoked Donald Trump’s fury by recently proposing to eliminate taxes on tips in the hotel and restaurant industry and other service industries. The Republican accused her of “plagiarizing” one of his ideas.
His running mate, JD Vance, made a similar accusation to Harris, accusing her of copying his proposal for an expanded tax credit for families. He put forward the figure of a tax boost of $5,000 per year per child for American families.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal policy think tank, has estimated that Harris’s overall proposals would cost between $1.7 trillion and $2 trillion.
His vice-president, Marc Goldwein, told AFP that the tax credit of $5,000 per year per child proposed by the Republican duo would alone cost more than $2,000 billion.