Vice President Kamala Harris released a campaign ad Tuesday that says former President Donald Trump is obsessed with tax cuts for corporations while the Democratic ticket is “focused on you” through efforts to take on price gouging and “corporate speculators” in the housing market.
The 30-second ad, titled “Focused,” is the fourth economy-related ad released by the Harris campaign since the Democratic National Convention to zero in on the top issue for voters with two months to go until Election Day.
Inflation is a potential Achilles heel for Ms. Harris, who served as vice president in a Biden administration that initially said rising costs would be a temporary post-pandemic phenomenon.
The Harris ad acknowledges that “costs are too high” but pins the blame on corporations and their GOP cronies.
Ms. Harris will “make groceries more affordable by cracking down on price gouging. And she’ll cut housing costs by taking on corporate speculators,” the narrator says. “Middle-class families built America. We need a leader who has their back.”
Economists have cast doubt on the idea that corporate price gouging is to blame for inflationary pressures in recent years.
“Rising markups have not been a main driver of the recent surge and subsequent decline in inflation during the current recovery,” the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco wrote in an economic letter in May.
Rather, they pointed to high production costs due to fluctuations in supply and demand. The pandemic disrupted many supply chains, making it difficult to satisfy consumer demand even as the government continued to cut stimulus checks that kept money flowing to many Americans.
Still, for Ms. Harris, blaming price gouging and offering government price controls to bring relief could be a potent political argument.
Both campaigns are expected to hammer economic issues in the post-Labor Day sprint to Nov. 5.
Polling averages from Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight show Ms. Harris with a 3-to-4 point lead over Mr. Trump but the race will come down to a handful of swing states where the candidates are neck-and-neck.
Ms. Harris’s new ad is part of a $370 million bundle of ad reservations on digital and television advertising that will run from Labor Day to Election Day.
While the inflation rate is easing, families are confronting a high plateau of prices that rose steadily over the past three years.
Mr. Trump says the Biden-Harris administration ushered in an “economic reign of terror” and hasn’t done much to ease the high cost of gas, groceries and other items.
He has pledged to “drill, baby, drill” to bring down energy prices through fossil fuels and criticized Ms. Harris’ recent plan to penalize excessive corporate price hikes as socialist price-setting that will lead to bare shelves.
Ms. Harris counters that Mr. Trump’s plan amounts to an extension of 2017 tax cuts that benefit corporations and wealthier tax filers, doing little for everyday workers.
“While corporations are gouging families, Trump is focused on giving them tax cuts,” her new ad says. “But Kamala Harris is focused on you.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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