Finance & economics | Trump v Harris

America has a huge deficit. Which candidate would make it worse?

Enough policies have been proposed to make a call

collage featuring Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, the White House, and the Presidential Seal of the United States.
Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy
|Washington, DC

It is safe to say that neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump will win November’s presidential election by pledging fiscal prudence. The deficit and debt are afterthoughts for most Americans these days. And proposals from both candidates for cleaning up the country’s finances are fundamentally unserious. Mr Trump has talked about using cryptocurrency or drilling for oil in order to pay off the national debt—ideas that amount to utter nonsense. Although Ms Harris has vowed to reduce the deficit, she has declined to offer any substantive plan for doing so.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Trump v Harris”

From the September 7th 2024 edition

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