Vice President Kamala Harris , now a slight favorite to win the November presidential election , will travel to Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday for a speech that outlines her economic policies.
Until now, Harris has avoided questions about her policies because most of the media detests former President Donald Trump . But now, the voters want to know what Harris stands for.
Harris is expected to campaign on an economic program that helps middle-class, working-class, and low-income households. Harris will promise to make life more affordable by focusing on housing, food, and healthcare costs. However, Harris's choice of close economic advisers gives away her far-left agenda.
Among Harris’s principal economic advisers will be Brian Deese, former director of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council; Michael Pyle, former deputy national security adviser for International Economics; and Deanne Millison, who has been with Harris since she was a senator. This bears noting.
Deese is a climate zealot who advocated Environmental, Social, and Governance policies while working for the giant investment management firm BlackRock. Deese would encourage Harris to pursue the goal of banning fracking in U.S. oil fields. After all, that was Harris’s position as a California senator. But a ban on fracking would devastate U.S. industry and cause gasoline prices to skyrocket. The United States produces more oil than any other nation. It would also undermine efforts to support foreign allies with low-cost energy exports that can compete against adversary energy supplies from nations such as Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.
Deese is also a high-tax liberal. In a 2023 paper, Deese proposed raising corporate taxes significantly, perhaps doubling them as a percentage of GDP. Deese says lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was not effective in raising business investment.
But recent National Bureau of Economic Research papers demonstrate that Deese is 100% wrong. The corporate tax provisions of the TCJA were extremely effective. Business investment increased strongly. Overseas earnings were repatriated and workers saw increases in real wages. Deese's ideas about corporate taxes are nonsensical. Raising corporate tax rates will lower labor income.
How about Pyle?
Well, in addition to his position on the National Security Council he was the chief economic adviser to Harris in the first year of the Biden administration. Pyle is a fervent supporter of industrial policy and a true believer in the green energy movement. Pyle argues that U.S. industry can be powered by green fuels, but, like Deese, he is wrong. The German industrial sector is in recession largely because Germany pivoted too soon to the green energy delusion.
Then there's Millison. She is perhaps the most interesting member of Harris’s inner circle. She served as Harris’s chief economic adviser and was legislative director for then-senator Harris. In that position, she pushed a far-left agenda on criminal justice reform. Millison was also an active proponent of the devastating COVID-19 shutdown policies that disrupted the economy and harmed millions of children in the country’s K-12 schools.
Top line: Harris’s economic team is clear evidence that her views are far to the left of the mainstream.
Her election would be a disaster for the nation.
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James Rogan is a former U.S. foreign service officer who later worked in finance and law for 30 years. He writes a daily note on the markets, politics, and society.
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