How Democrats are pitching Harris as good for business (despite some unpopular ideas)

A series of Democratic emissaries to the business world are making a case this week that a President Kamala Harris will be good for business — in spite of unanswered questions about her economic agenda and the unpopularity of some of her ideas in C-suites.

“She’ll fight for you, she’ll fight for all of us,” Tony West, a senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber (UBER), said of his sister in law Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The most direct business case so far came on Tuesday from former American Express (AXP) CEO Kenneth Chenault.

He talked about Harris helping businesses through the lens of democracy and overall stability, saying “as a business leader, I have seen firsthand why democracy is so important: it provides the foundation upon which American business and our economy depend.”

“Kamala Harris understands that,” he added.

Yet this limited outreach to the business world has clearly been complicated in recent days by certain Harris proposals, including elements of a recently released cost-of-living plan. Her idea for a ban on food price gouging has many comparing it to price controls.

Another idea sure to be unpopular in the business world is that Harris is on board with raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%. Big businesses currently pay a federal rate of 21%.

“What you’re seeing is the left’s version of economic populism,” noted RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas in a Yahoo Finance appearance this week, saying most of these idea are unlikely to happen even if she wins.

But Brusuelas added that there are some ideas in her proposals for the business community to like, including efforts to use tax incentives to build 3 million new homes.

The lineup of speakers this week in Chicago included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, former investment banker (and current Maryland Governor) Wes Moore, and others.

They often returned to a nuanced case based partly on what they say is Harris’s potential to improve the US business climate along with a giant dollop of criticism of what Donald Trump would bring if he wins instead.

One subject came up again and again: Deeply unpopular ideas from Trump to push historically high tariffs even higher if he wins.

The Trump campaign has responded this week arguing Harris is so anti-business that the only question is whether she’s a socialist or a communist.

Trump himself has begun calling her “comrade Kamala,” including at an event Monday intended to highlight economic issues and make America “wealthy again.”

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A case for Harris

Commerce Secretary Raimondo is the Biden administration’s most direct contact for many CEOs.

She has leveraged her previous career in venture capitalism and a record as an economy-minded governor of Rhode Island to earn a certain amount of credibility in C-suites in recent years.

When it was her turn to speak Monday, she tried to pass along some of that standing to Harris.

“We turned it around,” Raimondo said of changing the business climate in Rhode Island, adding “with a pro-business pro-worker agenda, Kamala Harris has that same agenda.”

Raimondo argued that Harris’s economic vision would reward entrepreneurs “and she’s going to forge an economy with fair competition free from monopolies, monopolies that crush workers and small businesses and startups.”

A similar case was made away from the campaign stage.

Harris aides told Bloomberg, for example, that the vice president would support measures to expand the crypto industry.

They also highlighted some of the positive reaction to Harris’s discussion of housing in recent cost of living plan. One Washington Post essay from Jim Parrott of the Urban Institute and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics was particularly touted.

The two economists wrote that the Harris housing plan could “change the economics” of the sector and would amount to “the most aggressive supply-side push since the national investment in housing that followed World War II.”

But any business friendly message remained perhaps an odd fit at times within a Democratic gathering that more often featured speakers eager to slam business leaders.

Perhaps the sharpest contrast came Tuesday night when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont first offered his message, including that “we need an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class.”

But the very next speaker was J. B. Pritzker, a wealthy businessman and member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.

The message from the now-Illinois Governor was an extreme contrast.

“Donald Trump thinks we should trust him on the economy because he claims to be very rich, but take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing — stupidity,” Pritzker said.

“Let’s be clear, it’s not woke that limits economic growth,” he added “It’s weird.”

Drawing a contrast to Donald Trump

The message from these speakers also leaned heavily on Trump — specifically his tariff plans.

“You think inflation was bad during COVID, just wait till you see the inflation associated with that,” offered Rep. Jim Himes — a former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker — on the sidelines of the convention during a live Politico event.

Trump “wants a sales tax that’s going to supercharge inflation,” added Raimondo, who was one of many speakers who likened Trump’s push for 60% duties on China and 10-20% on other trading partners as akin to a sales tax.

An estimate from Brendan Duke of the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that the maximum version of the Trump plan (a 20% blanket tariff combined with 60% on Chinese goods) could mean additional annual costs of $3,900 for a typical middle class family.

That figure has been cited again and again and again this week in numerous speeches and in a new video from the Harris/Walz campaign.

Whether this business-friendly message picks up momentum in the weeks ahead remains to be seen but the Democratic party was clearly trying to emphasize that a Harris administration would care about both business leaders and their employees.

“She understands it’s possible, in fact necessary, for a president to be both pro-business and pro-worker,” Chenault said in his speech.

It was just, he added, that “she knows the way not to do it is to give people like me a tax cut.”

Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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