Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her plan for lowering costs for middle-class Americans and criticized Donald Trump over his own economic policy during a speech in North Carolina on Friday.
“This election I do strongly believe is about two very different visions for the future: ours focused on the future and the other focused on the past,” Harris told supporters in Raleigh, N.C. “We see that contrast clearly in many ways including when it comes to how we think about the economy.”
Harris touted the economic progress she claims the U.S. has made under the Biden-Harris administration, but acknowledged that many Americans don’t feel that improvement in their everyday lives.
The vice president outlined more than a dozen policy proposals on Friday, including a plan to ban price gouging on food and groceries that has been widely criticized by conservatives. Her plan to control rising prices of food and grocery items includes proposed rules to prevent corporations from exploiting consumers, and a plan to enable the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to punish companies that violate those rules.
Harris took shots at Trump in her speech on Friday, suggesting he wants to impose a national sales tax on products and basic necessities that are imported from other countries. The Republican presidential nominee has proposed implementing a universal ten percent tariff on imported goods.
“It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs,” Harris said of Trump’s proposal. “A Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medications.”
She claimed Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 per year.
Trump, for his part, blamed Harris for rising food costs during her tenure as vice president. “You don’t have to imagine what a Kamala Harris presidency would be because you are living through that nightmare right now,” the former president said at a press conference on Thursday.
Harris also took another victory lap on the success of Medicare’s drug price negotiation efforts. She appeared alongside President Joe Biden at Maryland rally on Thursday to announce that Medicare had reached agreements with manufacturers of ten drugs selected for price negotiation. The drugs treat a variety of conditions, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and blood clots.
Harris is now vowing to cap insulin prices at $35 and out-of-pocket drug expenses at $2,000 for all Americans.
She criticized Trump on Friday for wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “That would take us back to a time when insurance companies could deny people with preexisting conditions,” she said. “We all remember what that was and we’re not going back.”
Harris’s economic proposal also includes tax benefits and policies aimed at increasing the nation’s housing stock; her campaign says she hopes to oversee the construction of 3 million new housing units over the next four years.
Harris proposed a plan to provide $25,000 in down payment support to first-time homebuyers, and to create a $40 billion fund to support innovative housing construction. Her economic agenda would also include a crackdown on alleged “price-fixing” by rental data firms and the purchasing of homes by large financial firms and wealthy investors.
She is also proposing a $6,000 tax credit for families with newborns and has vowed to restore the $3,600 expanded child tax credit that was included in Biden’s Covid-19 pandemic stimulus package in 2021.
While explaining her housing policies on Friday, Harris again tried to link Trump with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan, and claimed the project’s agenda would increase a typical American mortgage by $1,200 a year. Trump has strongly disavowed the plan.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, said in a statement Friday that Harris’s plan would only make the country’s housing shortage worse.
“Kamala Harris wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes. This will only further exacerbate the housing shortage in our country. It’s a disgrace,” Vance said on X. “We should be making it easier and more affordable for American citizens to buy homes.”
Harris, meanwhile, sought to set up a contrast between her and her opponent, and painted herself as a champion of the middle class.
“If you want to know who someone cares about look who they fight for,” Harris said, “Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations. We — I will fight to give money back to hard-working middle-class Americans.”
The Republican National Committee blasted Harris’s plan in a statement released after the conclusion of her speech.
“Kamala Harris continues to lie that she will fix our country’s economic crisis ‘on day one,’ but her day one started three-and-a-half years ago as vice president alongside failed Joe Biden,” the RNC statement said. “Kamala’s economic agenda will spike prices and taxes in the long run, and her Maduro-like price controls will put America on the same path as communist countries that have been destroyed by the same weak economic policies.”