Economic issues are moving front and center in the presidential race this week, as both candidates stump in battleground North Carolina. Or at least the campaigns want to highlight those issues. Donald Trump may have other ideas.
At an event in Asheville on Wednesday, on stage with signs reading “NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY” and “NO TAX ON TIPS,” Trump gave a speech that his campaign said would focus on “the economic hardships created by the Harris-Biden Administration.” The former president did indeed talk up the economy he led and attack Vice President Kamala Harris on the current administration’s economic record — but he often veered off to other favorite topics as well.
Trump started his remarks by talking about polling, “fake news,” the MAGA movement and President Joe Biden dropping out of the race. He attacked Kamala Harris and complained about the media coverage she’s received before pivoting to what he called an “intellectual speech” about the promised subject, the economy.
“Her radical liberal policies have caused horrific inflation, decimated the middle class and gutted the finances of millions and millions of American families,” Trump said of Harris. He said that real incomes are down by $2,000 a year and credit-card debt is at a record high, winding his way to the question his campaign wants to drive home: “Are you better off now with Harris and Biden than you were with a person named President Donald J. Trump?” he asked. “Does anyone here feel richer under Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe than you were during the Trump administration? Is anything less expensive under Kamala Harris and crooked Joe?”
A messaging reset? Frustrated Republicans have been publicly pleading with Trump to demonstrate a modicum of messaging discipline – to “quit whining” about the changing shape of the race, stop questioning the size of Harris’s campaign crowds and zoom in on policy rather than personality-based attacks.
“The path forward is to focus on policy. Those are three words for the Republican Party that I think is a path to success — focus on policy. Who’s going to secure the border? Who’s going to grow the economy? Who’s going to stay out of World War III?” former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy advised Trump in an NPR interview Tuesday.
Of course, a focus on GOP policy could also have some drawbacks for Trump, as Harris and Democrats have regularly sought to tie him to the conservative Project 2025 agenda and hammer him for those plans.
Trump made clear Wednesday that he was trying to stay on topic. “Today we're going to talk about one subject,” he told the crowd. “They say it's the most important subject. I'm not sure it is, but they say it's the most important. Inflation is the most important, but that's part of economy.”
Still, even when discussing the economy, Trump littered his remarks with a litany of off-teleprompter riffs and ad hominem attacks as well as false and misleading claims. He called his economy the strongest in history, for example, and his tax cuts and the largest ever. “When I left office I handed Kamala and crooked Joe Biden a surging economy with no inflation,” Trump said, ignoring the devastation of the Covid pandemic. He later added: “I gave Harris and Biden an economic miracle and they quickly turned it into an economic nightmare, with a nation-wrecking agenda ripped straight out of Kamala’s San Francisco liberal playbook.”
Trump promised to sign an executive order directing officials to do everything they can to rapidly drive prices down and said he’d create an economic boom. “It will be a whole-of-government effort to raise the standard of living and make American life affordable again,” he said.
Yet he spent far more time on name-calling and dour predictions than on laying out an affirmative economic agenda or specific plan beyond increasing fossil fuel production and eliminating income taxes on tips and Social Security wages. He did suggest he’d impose tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods, which economists say would be inflationary and disproportionately affect lower-income consumers.
“No matter what he says, one thing is certain: Trump has no plan, no vision, and no meaningful interest in helping build up the middle class,” Harris communications director Michael Tyler reportedly wrote in a campaign memo.
What’s next: Trump scheduled another press conference for tomorrow, and Harris is scheduled to lay out her own economic plan at an event in North Carolina on Friday.
The bottom line: Trump may struggle to stay on message, but he and his campaign are trying to tie the negative perceptions of Biden’s economy around Harris’s neck. But the fact that Harris is also campaigning in North Carolina this week and that Democrats have renewed hope there highlights just how much the campaign has shifted in recent weeks. In a close race, Harris now leads in six of seven swing states, according to the Cook Political Report.
