What is Kamala Harris’s approach to the economy?  She holds a BA in Economics from Howard and her father taught Economics at Stanford.  The basic issues must not be strange to her.  Still, figuring out her own positions requires reading the tea leaves. 

For four years, Harris has followed the Biden administration’s economic policy in “lockstep.”[1]  Any Vice President would do the same.  Former President Biden presided over a period of economic growth, rising employment, and rising real wages.  Harris has supported his calls for higher taxes on corporations and on individuals earning at least $400,000, while cutting them for lower income groups.  In particular, they have called for maintaining many of the 2017 Trump tax cuts as they effect lower incomes while raising taxes on upper incomes. 

Harris is lumbered with the inflation and high interest-rates of recent years.  Consumer prices have risen 19.5 percent since December 2020.  House prices and rents are currently very high.  Harris has blamed the price rises, in part, on corporate profiteering.[2]  

Harris likes tax “credits.”  Senator Harris proposed a sort of universal basic income for lower-income earners.  It would have paid $3,000 a month to individuals and $6,000 for married couples.[3]  It would have operated through a tax credit.  In 2021, the Democrats pushed through a temporary increase in the child tax credit and an earned income tax credit for childless workers.  Those measures soon expired, but Democrats (including Harris) have supported their revival.  Harris also proposed a Rent Relief Act.  It would have provided a tax credit to renters who earn $100,000 or less and who spend a minimum of 30 percent of their income on rent.  Harris opposed the 2017 tax cuts pushed through by the Trump administration; in 2020, while running for president, Harris called for the full repeal of those tax cuts.  In 2019, she said that she would not have voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement.  She did vote against the renegotiated version during the Trump administration. 

            Harris may have little interest in or grasp of national economic policy.  She reportedly made little contribution to either the economic legislation of the early administration nor to the urgent debates over a response to the painful inflation that the legislation helped to ignite.  To the extent that she did engage, it was with the “human interest” perspective on the issues.  “[H]ow certain policies affect workers and families at a personal level…”  Harris vigorously supported child tax credits, as well as other pro-family and child policies.  The latter could not garner enough support among Senate Democrats to be included in legislation.  Harris also pushed hard to expand access to capital provided by banks to small businesses and communities of color. 

            She has argued against medical debt impinging on credit ratings, setting this in parallel to the Biden administrations attempts to cancel student loan debts. 

Harris is much more of a micro-economy person than a macro-economy person.  If Harris becomes president, She’ll need a good Treasury Secretary.  They all do. 

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[1] Jon Kamp, Richard Rubin, and Justin Lahart, “Harris’s Past Hints At Economic Policy,” WSJ, 25 July 2024, and Jim Tankersley, Jeanna Smialek, and Ana Swanson, “Harris’s Views on Economics Are Seen as Being Mostly in Line With Current Policy,” NYT, 25 July 2024.. 

[2] Economist NOT on the far-left blame high demand intersecting limited supply. 

[3] So like Social Security for people of working age?  It seems likely that the payments would increase with the passage of time.