What would a President Harris do?

At the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris delivered a well-crafted text with style, to constant rounds of applause and support. She described her personal and family journey, expressed love for her country and many people, wrapped herself in the flag and set out a general aim of helping all to live their American dream as she is doing. Her calls to end the divisions of the past and promises to serve all were punctuated by savage attacks on Donald Trump and his followers, which blunted the unity message.

Republicans heard a different speech. They were critical of the lack of policy content and of the side stepping of responsibility for the Biden/Harris Presidency with its high past inflation, loss of Afghanistan to the Taliban, uncertain touch on foreign policy and the failure to control the borders.

The Convention was designed to keep attention on the negative campaign against Trump and on showing Harris and vice president pick Tim Walz as “normal” rather than “weird”, whilst keeping away from policy. Kamala Harris has refused all interviews so far and has travelled policy light and touchy-feely heavy, which has worked well for her. This speech was balanced on Israel and the Palestinians, said little about inflation and growth, reinforced her support for a woman’s right to choose abortion and was quiet on migration.

It seems likely a Harris administration would be higher tax and more regulatory. She will endorse the increase in corporate tax from 21% to 28% and backs strengthened measures against “price gouging” as an answer to high food prices. She has been to the left of Biden but will probably keep his no tax rises on incomes below $400,000 pledge, though this is a high ceiling. We need to look to her past views on policy to understand her better.

Kamala Harris’ previous views

We know quite bit about her thoughts and politics as she has run a campaign to be elected to the Senate, and attempted to get the Presidential nomination in 2020 before accepting the vice presidential slot alongside Joe Biden.

Her early days running for office in California had her as a tough Attorney and Prosecutor. As Senator and presidential candidate she had to widen her interests from law and order into healthcare, the economy and foreign policy. She emerged to the left of Biden. Running for the Presidential nomination she favoured the abolition of the death penalty, more open borders, citizenship for Dreamers, no more border wall, bigger subsidies for renters and homeowners, bigger tax breaks for the lower paid, a higher minimum wage, higher teachers’ pay with lower student debt, higher taxes on the rich and companies, a financial industry tax, opposition to tariffs and against joining the TPP. She has subsequently moved to support Joe Biden’s more moderate positions as his vice president.

Acting jointly with Joe Biden on the 2025 budget she agreed to a 28% corporation tax rate, up from 21%, compared to the 35% she previously favoured. She accepted Biden’s pledge to avoid tax increases for anyone on under $400,000 a year, though she had favoured a lower ceiling previously. She agreed to treating unrealised capital gains as income for high earners.

In her first presidential nomination bid, she stumbled over health policy and ended with a compromise position of wishing to extend the coverage of the state scheme. She was to the left on tax, the economy and migration, but was opposed to the widespread use of tariffs. She went along with President Biden keeping most of the Trump tariffs he inherited, but she criticises Trump tariff plans and regards them as a consumer tax.

Harris versus Trump tax policies

The Tax Foundation has set out the differences between the Biden/Harris 2025 budget and the plans Trump would wish to adopt. They conclude the Harris tax rises would lead to 660,000 fewer jobs and to a loss of 1.6% of GDP. The Trump tariffs they say cut GDP by 0.2% and mean 142,000 fewer jobs. Most forecasters agree that The Harris tax rises will have a negative effect, though they disagree about how big an impact.

Kamala Harris foreign policy

Kamala Harris is married to a Jewish man and has been a defender of Israel’s right to defend itself. She has in the past used tough language against Hamas terrorism. More recently she has supported President Biden’s attempts to get a negotiated ceasefire with the return of the hostages and has spoken out in favour of peace in view of the high rate of civilian casualties in Gaza.

The Democrat Party is split over Gaza. Traditionally both US parties are friendly towards Israel but now there is an important group within the Democrat party that lobbies energetically on behalf of the Palestinians. Her speech expressed great sympathy both to Israel for the Hamas atrocities, and to the Palestinians for the high civilian death rate in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been trying everything to get Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement. Democrats want this out of the headlines come the election.

The Biden policy on Ukraine is under strain. The president has offered plenty of verbal support to Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression. He has progressively increased the range of weapons and ammunition the US has been prepared to send whilst making it clear US forces will not be directly involved, and US weapons will not be deployed against Russia on Russian territory.

This doctrine is presently being challenged. Ukraine has decided to open a new front by invading Russia, to destroy Russian weapons likely to be used against Ukraine and to gain territory in Russia as a bargaining counter against the land Russia has seized in Ukraine.

Kamala Harris seems to agree with current policy. She will inherit the crucial questions. How much further can the US go in providing weapons and allowing their use in Russia? When and how will the US help bring Russia to negotiate a solution? Or is the plan amended to help Ukraine to an outright victory, so all Russian troops leave? That would require considerably more help than the US has given to date.

It seems likely that, if elected, Kamals Harris will offer negotiated peace as the end of both wars, and she would wish to pursue such talks. This narrows the gap with Trump who expressly wants to pressurise the belligerents to reach a peace in both cases.

Other policy differentiators

Kamala Harris will stress her support for easier access to abortions as this is popular with Democrat and many female voters. President Trump will highlight the lack of border control over the last three years and blame Kamala Harris for it as the “Border Czar”.

The election is now a knife edge. The polls are much closer after a good run by the Democrats. Kamala Harris has a useful lead in the national polls, but the swing states are too close to call. Mr Trump is still ahead on the economy, benefitting from the lack of control over inflation and the high prices for gasoline and food.

The Harris campaign still concentrates on attacks on Trump’s past conduct and character, whilst Mr Trump wanders off script on borders and the economy into unflattering adjectives about his opponent that may not be helping.

We did not learn much more of what a Harris presidency would do and it is likely the swing states remain too close to call. Attention will now shift to the all-important first debate between Trump and Harris.

The last debate with Joe Biden led to his exit as the Trump strategy for opposing Biden proved too successful leading to his party getting rid of him instead of the electors in November. Mr Trump will need to come up with a better and more consistent set of reasons as to why Kamal Harris is not the right person for the job by the time of the debate, as the momentum is currently with her, and he has yet to show strong message discipline about the new circumstances. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign may find it more difficult from here as attention will turn more to policy and record despite Democrat attempts to sell their candidate as new, fresh and unencumbered by her own past and the record of the Biden/Harris administration.