A number of Democratic business envoys this week expressed the view that a President Kamala Harris would be good for the economy – despite unanswered questions about her economic agenda and the unpopularity of some of her ideas in the executive suites.
“She will fight for you, she will fight for all of us,” Tony West, senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber (UBER), said of his sister-in-law at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday evening.
The most direct business transaction to date came on Tuesday from former CEO of American Express (AXP), Kenneth Chenault.
He spoke about how Harris is helping businesses from a democracy and overall stability perspective, saying, “As a business leader, I have seen firsthand why democracy is so important: it is the foundation upon which the American economy and the American economy are built.”
“Kamala Harris understands this,” he added.
But that limited contact with the business community has recently been made significantly more difficult by certain proposals from Harris, including elements of a recently released cost-of-living plan. Her idea of a ban on excessive food prices has been compared by many to price controls.
Another idea that is sure to be unpopular in the business world is Harris’s advocacy of raising the corporate tax rate to 28%. Large corporations currently pay a federal tax rate of 21%.
“What you’re seeing here is the left’s version of economic populism,” RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas noted in an appearance on Yahoo Finance this week, saying that even if he won the election, most of these ideas would likely not be implemented.
But Brusuelas added that her proposals include some ideas that the business community might like, including efforts to build three million new homes through tax incentives.
Speakers in Chicago this week included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, former investment banker (and current Maryland Governor) Wes Moore and others.
They often resorted to a nuanced argument based in part on Harris’s claim that she had the potential to improve the U.S. business climate, coupled with a fair amount of criticism about what Donald Trump would bring if he won instead.
One topic came up again and again: Trump’s deeply unpopular idea of further increasing the historically high tariffs if he won the election.
The Trump campaign responded this week by arguing that Harris is so anti-business that the only question is whether she is a socialist or a communist.
Trump himself has begun calling her “Comrade Kamala,” including at an event on Monday aimed at highlighting economic issues and making America “prosperous again.”
A case for Harris
For many CEOs, Commerce Secretary Raimondo is the Biden administration’s most direct contact.
She has been able to leverage her previous career in venture capital and her record as a business-minded governor of Rhode Island to gain a certain level of credibility in the upper echelons of government in recent years.
When it was her turn to speak on Monday, she tried to pass on some of that prestige to Harris.
“We have turned things around,” Raimondo said of the change in Rhode Island’s business climate, adding, “With her pro-business and pro-worker agenda, Kamala Harris is pursuing the same agenda.”
Raimondo argued that Harris’ economic vision will reward entrepreneurs, “and she will build an economy of fair competition, free of monopolies, monopolies that crush workers, small businesses and startups.”
Away from the campaign stage, a similar case was made.
Harris’ aides, for example, told Bloomberg that the vice president would support measures to expand the crypto industry.
They also highlighted some of the positive responses to Harris’ discussion of housing in the recent cost of living plan. An essay by Jim Parrott of the Urban Institute and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics in the Washington Post received particular praise.
The two economists wrote that Harris’ housing plan could transform the “economics” of the sector and amount to “the most aggressive supply-side offensive since national investment in housing after World War II.”
But any pro-business message seemed at times an odd fit in a Democratic convention that usually featured speakers eager to slam business leaders.
Perhaps the sharpest contrast came on Tuesday night, when Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont first announced his message, saying, in part, “We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class.”
But the next speaker was JB Pritzker, a wealthy businessman and member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
The message of the current governor of Illinois presented an extreme contrast.
“Donald Trump thinks we should trust him on economic issues because he claims to be very rich. But take it from a real billionaire: Trump is only rich in one thing – his stupidity,” Pritzker said.
“To be clear, it’s not woke that’s limiting economic growth,” he added. “It’s weird.”
Draw a contrast to Donald Trump
The message of these speakers also relied heavily on Trump – particularly his tariff plans.
“You think inflation was bad during COVID? Just wait until you see the inflation associated with it,” said Rep. Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker, on the sidelines of the convention during a Politico live event.
Trump “wants a sales tax that will fuel inflation,” added Raimondo, who was one of many speakers who compared Trump’s call for 60 percent tariffs on China and 10-20 percent on other trading partners to a sales tax.
According to an estimate by Brendan Duke of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, the maximum version of Trump’s plan (a flat 20% tariff combined with 60% on Chinese goods) could mean an additional annual cost of $3,900 for a typical middle-class family.
This figure was cited repeatedly this week in numerous speeches and in a new video from the Harris/Walz campaign team.
Whether this pro-business message will gain momentum in the coming weeks remains to be seen, but the Democratic Party wanted to make clear that a Harris administration would care about both business leaders and their employees.
“She understands that it is possible and even necessary for a president to be both pro-business and pro-worker,” Chenault said in his speech.
He added that all she knew was that “the way not to do this is to give tax breaks to people like me.”
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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