Kamala Harris will struggle to beat Trump on the economy when she lacks a big idea

Kamala Harris’s speech on the economy on Wednesday was designed to reassure voters that she is not a Marxist.

“I’m a capitalist,” she told voters at the Economic Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – the state that could offer either her or Donald Trump a path to the White House in November.

“I believe in free and fair markets. I believe in consistent and transparent rules of the road, to create a stable business environment. And I know the power of American innovation,” she insisted.

Her speech was the most detailed intervention on the economy voters have seen since she took over the Democratic ticket from Joe Biden in late July.

The big idea was that she would boost domestic manufacturing as a bulwark against cheap Chinese imports, with a focus on “the sectors that will define the next century”, including biomanufacturing, semiconductors and aerospace engineering.

A tax credit scheme, which has not been explained in detail, would cost $100 billion over ten years, and be funded by an increase in corporation tax.

Her other policy ideas, laid out in an accompanying 80-page handbook, largely focus on retail economics, with an increase in tax credits for the middle class and a federal ban on unreasonable grocery price hikes.

The hope from Ms Harris’s coterie of economic advisers, many of whom were inherited from Mr Biden’s campaign, is that a focus on factory production and pocketbook issues will win over blue-collar voters in northern states where Trump has made gains over the years.

But in a race of fine margins where the economy is king, she is struggling to convince voters that her plan for growth is credible.

Trump’s six-point lead

Although the gap is narrowing, Trump still leads her by around six points on economic issues in national polls. He benefits from playing the role of the challenger in a race where the incumbent administration is not perceived to have succeeded in boosting the economy.

Against that backdrop, the problem with Ms Harris’s economic pitch is not with her specific policy proposals, but that she lacks a big idea.

Mr Biden did not name his policies “Bidenomics”, but welcomed the term to refer to his combination of muscular industrial policy on green energy and semiconductors, and infrastructure investment and tax increases for the rich.

He sold voters a more interventionist state in exchange for the promise of long-term growth and the revival of rust belt areas that fell to Trump in 2016.

For Trump, the priority is an unusual combination of isolationist trade policy and domestic deregulation, paired with corporate tax cuts to sweeten CEOs and fossil fuel production to tackle gas prices.

Ms Harris does not have the same clear vision. Her plan for an “opportunity economy” has been revealed to be a series of populist tax cuts for middle class voters, an attempt to sue grocery stores into lowering their prices, and a vague continuation of Mr Biden’s economic agenda.

Personal story

With less than four months to campaign, Ms Harris’s team has focussed on messaging and her own personal story at the expense of building a coherent economic policy platform.

Liberal policy views she held in 2019 have been abandoned in favour of reassuring Wall Street, and her criticism of Trump’s platform has tended to focus on the man, not his ideas.

Does Ms Harris want fundamental change to the US economy, beyond the redistribution and industrial policy of Mr Biden? Or does she think his tax increases on the wealthy have gone too far, and that federal investment has been unsuccessful in keeping growth up and prices down?

Does she think that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports would only drive up costs for consumers? Or does she agree that domestic production should be shielded by government intervention? Her campaign suggests she believes all of these things at once.

Ms Harris is not a Marxist. No American politician who wanted any chance of reaching the White House could sincerely take that position.

But to say she is a capitalist – while running a campaign in a country where capitalism is akin to a national religion – is not an enlightening response.

With less than 50 days to election day, she has some weeks left to convince voters her economic plan is realistic and considered. If she cannot, then carrying the swing states she needs will be difficult indeed.