A wave of Democratic envoys dispatched to the business community this week argues that a Kamala Harris presidency would be good for business — even though questions about her economic policies remain unresolved and some of her ideas are unpopular among executives.
“She’s going to fight for you, she’s going to fight for all of us,” Tony West, Uber’s executive vice president and chief legal officer, said of his sister-in-law at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday night.
The most straightforward business case to date came on Tuesday from former American Express (AXP) CEO Kenneth Chenault.
He spoke about Harris’ support for businesses from the perspective of democracy and overall stability, saying, “As a business leader, I’ve seen firsthand why democracy is so important — it provides the foundation on which American businesses and the economy depend.”
“Kamala Harris gets it,” he added.
Business executive Kenneth Chenault speaks during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Andrew Harnick/Getty Images) (Andrew Harnick via Getty Images)
But this limited outreach to the business community has apparently been complicated in recent days by certain proposals from Harris, including elements of the recently announced cost-of-living plan, including her idea of banning food price gouging, which many have compared to price controls.
Another idea sure to be unpopular in the business community is Harris’ support for raising the corporate tax rate to 28%. Currently, large corporations pay a federal tax rate of 21%.
“What we’re seeing is a left-wing version of economic populism,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, said in an appearance on Yahoo Finance this week, adding that most of those ideas are unlikely to come to fruition even if she wins.
But Brusuelas added that his proposal includes some ideas that the business community likes, such as an effort to use tax incentives to build 3 million new homes.
Speakers in Chicago this week included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former investment banker (and now Maryland governor) Wes Moore.
They often returned to more nuanced arguments based in part on Harris’ potential to improve the U.S. business environment and the larger criticism of what a victory for Donald Trump might bring.
One idea that has come up time and again is the highly unpopular idea of further increasing historically high tariffs if Trump wins.
The Trump campaign countered this week by arguing that Harris is so anti-corporate that the only question is whether she’s a socialist or communist.
Trump himself has also begun calling her “Comrade Kamala” at an event on Monday aimed at highlighting economic issues and making America “rich again.”
The story continues
Harris’ case
Commerce Secretary Raimondo is the most direct point of contact for many of the Biden administration’s CEOs.
She has won some credibility among business executives in recent years, drawing on her past career in venture capitalism and her record as an economically-minded governor of Rhode Island.
When it was her turn to speak on Monday, she sought to convey some of that position to Harris.
“We’ve turned things around,” Raimondo said of the changes in Rhode Island’s business climate, adding that Kamala Harris, who runs a pro-business, pro-labor platform, also runs the same platform.
Raimondo argued that Harris’ economic vision benefits entrepreneurs and that “she will build an economy with fair competition, free of monopolies that stifle workers, small businesses and startups.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo speaks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) (MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images)
There were similar instances outside the election campaign arena.
For example, a Harris aide told Bloomberg that the vice president would support measures to expand the cryptocurrency industry.
We also highlighted some positive reactions to Harris’ recent discussion of housing in her cost-of-living plan, with a Washington Post essay by Jim Parrott of the Urban Institute and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics being particularly well received.
The two economists wrote that the Harris housing plan could be “economically transformative” for the housing sector and would represent “the most aggressive supply-side push for national housing investment since the end of World War II.”
But the pro-business message sometimes seemed odd at a Democratic rally, where many speakers were eager to denounce business leaders.
Perhaps the stark contrast came Tuesday night, when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont first rolled out a message along the lines of, “We need an economy that works for all of us, not just billionaires.”
But the next speaker was J.B. Pritzker, a wealthy businessman and member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
The message from Illinois’ current governor was in stark contrast.
“Donald Trump claims to be incredibly wealthy so we think we should trust him with the economy, but if you listen to actual billionaires, the only thing that makes him wealthy is stupidity,” Pritzker said.
“Let me be clear: it’s not woke people who are limiting economic growth,” he added. “That’s strange.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on the second day of the Democratic National Convention. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images) (Kevin Deitch via Getty Images)
Contrast with Donald Trump
The messages from these speakers also leaned heavily on President Trump, and especially his tariff plans.
“If you thought the inflation during the COVID crisis was bad, just look at the inflation that followed,” Rep. Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs banker, said during a Politico live event on the sidelines of the convention.
Trump “want a sales tax that will accelerate inflation,” added Raimondo, one of many speakers who likened Trump’s push for a 60% tariff on China and 10% to 20% tariffs on other trading partners to a sales tax.
Brendan Duke of the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimates that the most advanced version of Trump’s plan – a combination of a 20% across-the-board tariff and a 60% tariff on Chinese goods – could cost the typical middle-class family an extra $3,900 a year.
This figure has been cited again and again this week in numerous speeches and new videos by the Harris/Waltz campaign.
Whether this business-friendly message will gain traction in the coming weeks remains to be seen, but Democrats were clearly trying to emphasize that a Harris administration would care about both business owners and their employees.
“She understands that a president can, in fact must, stand on the side of both business and workers,” Chenault said in the speech.
But, he added, “she knows that the way to avoid that is to give tax cuts to people like me.”
Ben Werschkul is Yahoo Finance’s Washington correspondent.
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