This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 25 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle for an exclusive interview focused on her economic plan where she laid out her vision for America. Earlier in Pittsburgh, Harris unveiled the three pillars of that plan, which include lowering costs for the middle class, investing in innovation and entrepreneurship, and making America a global manufacturing leader.
Both in that speech and in her interview with Ruhle, Harris made sure to emphasize the contrast between her economic vision and that of her opponent’s … or rather, his lack thereof.
Harris made sure to emphasize the contrast between her economic vision and that of Trump’s … or rather, his lack thereof.
“Frankly, and I say this in all sincerity, he’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues,” Haris told Ruhle. “And one must be serious and have a plan and a real plan that’s not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally but actually putting the thought into what will be the return on the investment and what will be the economic impact on everyday people.”
Harris is right, Donald Trump doesn’t really have what you could reasonably call a plan. Instead, he’s been doing his salesmen patter, saying whatever it takes to get you in the car, like his comically desperate attempt to bribe different constituencies with a new tax cut seemingly every other day. So far, he’s promised tax cuts for tipped workers and senior citizens, and ending taxes on overtime.
There’s also Trump’s pathetic pandering to high-tax states, promising to reverse his own tax law that capped the federal deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT.
And there is, perhaps, Trump’s signature terrible idea: saving American industry by imposing massive tariffs. Of course, those costs largely get passed on to American consumers, essentially amounting to an across-the-board sales tax.
Now, if these kinds of big promises with no chance of actually coming to fruition seem familiar — that is because this has always been Trump’s style. Shortly after the 2016 election, he showed up at an Indianapolis Carrier plant to declare that he had saved 800 jobs from going overseas. But, as Harris recalled Wednesday, that didn’t happen.
“You’ll remember Carrier then offshored hundreds of jobs to Mexico under his watch,” Harris told the crowd in Pittsburgh. “And it wasn’t just there. On Trump’s watch, offshoring went up and manufacturing jobs went down across our country.”
Under the Trump administration, the country had a net loss of about 190,000 manufacturing jobs. While under President Joe Biden and Harris, we have overseen a massive gain in manufacturing jobs, more than 700,000 since Trump left office.
If these kinds of big promises with no chance of actually coming to fruition seem familiar — that is because this has always been Trump’s style. But there’s another metric where the difference is even more stark. Under Trump’s presidency, total spending on manufacturing construction across the country — building up new facilities to make more goods right here in America — was basically static for four whole years. Thanks to the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, spending on manufacturing construction is now booming. It has more than tripled since Biden and Harris took office. We can see the impact of that on the ground. Over $100 billion in battery manufacturing and supply chain investments have amounted to over 75,000 new jobs across the country. Right now, new microchip manufacturing projects are in the works from New York to Idaho. Again none of this was happening under Trump. Trump did not reignite American manufacturing. He did not put an end to outsourcing. He did, however, manage to start a few trade wars but they mostly backfired. Trump’s one major piece of economic legislation cut taxes for corporations and rich people. Meanwhile, over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has accomplished what Trump promised but could not achieve.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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