Kamala Harris' program: economy, immigration, abortion… Her main measures

Democratic candidate for the American presidency, Kamala Harris promises to help the middle classes facing the crisis and inflation, to restore the right to abortion and to defend all minorities. She must also decide on the question of immigration. An update on her program.

In the race for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris is flying the flag for the Democratic Party. This political family at the heart of the American two-party system, facing the very conservative Republican Party represented by Donald Trump, wants to be progressive. It is the expression of the left and the center in the United States and, this title, generally has the support of minorities whether they are ethnic (African-Americans, Latinos and other communities from immigration), religious (Protestantism being extremely majority in the United States, all other religions are part of the minorities), or established according to socio-economic profiles.

As the Democratic Party candidate, Kamala Harris is proposing a program and measures that are in line with greater equality between social classes. She has also made defending purchasing power for the middle classes her hobbyhorse for the presidential election. It must be said that the economy is the main concern of Americans faced with significant inflation that complicates access to housing and employment. Kamala Harris is therefore expected on these economic subjects and has unveiled several measures supposed to “give money back to middle and working class families”.

On the economic front, the Democrat is proposing three strong measures in particular: a birth tax credit, assistance for first-time buyers in housing and a boost to business creation. She is also promising a reduction in inflation to 3% and price controls for basic necessities and medicines. While she plans to make it easier for the least wealthy households to access it, the situation is different for very wealthy households. Kamala Harris plans to tax capital gains of households earning more than $1 million a year at 28%. That's more than the current rate, but less than the 39% Joe Biden wants.

Kamala Harris is in line with what Joe Biden did during his term. However, the current president, who has had to deal with the post-covid crisis, which is linked to the financial difficulties of the American middle class, is often criticized on this aspect of his record. Conversely, Donald Trump, who is a billionaire and a real estate tycoon, is considered to have a mastery of the economy and suffers less from the memory left by his term and erased over the past four years. The fact remains that Kamala Harris contrasts her program with that of the Republican who, according to her, “fights””for billionaires and big business”.

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Still, a portion of the traditional Democratic electorate is turning away from Kamala Harris in favor of Donald Trump for economic reasons, particularly African-American and Latino men. To convince them, Kamala Harris has in fact insisted on measures designed for these communities with an “economic opportunity” program for black men that provides assistance for training, apprenticeships and access to employment and entrepreneurship, but also a more social component focused on health. She also addressed the Latino community during an interview on Telemundo.

Abortion, immigration… Kamala Harris' social measures

Kamala Harris also, and above all, focused her campaign on measures with a more social aspect. In particular, she placed the subject of the right to abortion, which has been pushed back to the point of being banned in several American states after a Supreme Court decision, at the heart of the campaign. The Democratic Party is in favor of abortion and wants to guarantee this right to women throughout the country. More generally, women's health has been one of the major topics of her campaign. But the Democratic candidate has proposed measures aimed at several minorities.

While she is addressing minorities, Kamala Harris must also clarify her immigration policy and on this point she is playing a balancing act: she wants to appear firm to attract the moderate right, but not too firm so as not to scare away the left. However, the candidate has announced a hardening of migration policy involving “consequences” for illegal migrants and investments in physical barriers at the border with Mexico. However, she is not discriminatory towards towards migrants, such as Donald Trump, who considers immigration to be the “number 1 problem” and gets lost in xenophobic or racist criticism.

In terms of foreign policy, Kamala Harris positions herself mainly on Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the latter, she reiterated her commitment to the defense of the Hebrew state and specified that she would not suspend American arms deliveries to Israel in the event of victory. But she also wants to appear less pro-Israel than Joe Biden and condemned the violence perpetrated against towards Palestinian civilians. She said that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and called for a “ceasefire.” Her position matters especially because American Arab-Muslim voters who usually support the Democratic camp may turn away from Kamala Harris because of Joe Biden's policy on the Middle East war.

As for Ukraine, she reaffirms the United States' support for the country after the Russian invasion. Moreover, she pinned Donald Trump on his good relations with leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and assured that she will not make “friends” with dictators.

The ecological component is not the most substantiated part of Kamala Harris' program, but the candidate invests in the subject to distance herself from Donald Trump who broke with the Paris agreements during his presidential term. While she defends “the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live without the pollution that fuels the climate crisis,” she does not specify how. At the same time, she is doing about-faces on several measures that she defended in the past: no more question of opposing hydraulic fracturing, a technique that cracks rocks to extract hydrocarbons, no more question of banning plastic straws and other waste of this type that is nevertheless replaceable. In the continuity Joe Biden's Kamala Harris says she is in favor of the inflation reduction act (IRA), a set of ecological, economic and social measures