Trump, who has held an edge on the economy in most polls, has been going full bore on the issue, proposing a bevy of individual tax breaks and general tariffs that could rattle the world of international trade.
Harris has made up significant ground on the issue since taking over the top of the Democratic presidential ticket in July, narrowing a gulf between Trump and President Biden.
The vice president even drew to a virtual tie on who would be best at handling the economy in a Marist poll of Pennsylvania, a swing state potentially pivotal to either candidate’s path to victory.
Biden’s economic approval ratings sagged during the course of his term under the malaise of inflation despite frequent upside surprises in national economic metrics.
Harris almost instantly gained ground on the issue when she took over the ticket from Biden, closing the gap with Trump relative to Biden by 6 percentage points in Marist polling and by 10 points in Fox News polling in September.
While economic rescue measures sent out in response to the pandemic also prevented a serious downturn and are likely in the process of delivering the Federal Reserve’s long-sought “soft landing,” inflation has rained on the parade of the economy’s recovery, depriving Democrats of a chance to boast.
“This is truly a chance that many economists said the U.S. economy would not have within four years, and yet here it is in front of us. That’s remarkable — but you can’t erase the economic pain that people went through or tell them, ‘Actually, you could have had it a lot worse,’” labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards told The Hill.
The Hill’s Tobias Burns has more here.
