Much of the Republican case against a Kamala Harris presidency has rested on the claim that she’s responsible for — and would continue — policies that caused eye-watering inflation for people during the Biden administration. But a new survey of economists, conducted by The Wall Street Journal, finds that most economists believe that former President Donald Trump would pursue a more inflationary policy regime.
These survey results are damning for Trump, whose main pitch to voters outside of his diehard base is that his economic record is stronger than Biden and Harris’.
The Journal polled 50 economists as to whether they believed Harris’ or Trump’s proposed policies would cause higher inflation and found that 12% said Harris and 68% said Trump, while another 20% responded there would be no material difference between the two. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described the coalescing around Harris as less likely to produce high inflation as “as close to unanimity as the profession gets.”
More striking still: That survey represented a broader consensus pinning higher inflation on Trump than an earlier version of the survey in July, which compared Trump with Biden, since Biden was still the expected Democratic nominee at that time. In that earlier poll, 16% of economists said Biden would cause higher inflation, 56% answered Trump, and 27% said it would make no material difference.
These survey results are damning for Trump, whose main pitch to voters outside of his diehard base is that his economic record is stronger than Biden and Harris’ — and that he alone can bring down high prices. And yet, the more economists are hearing about his plans, the more they’re convinced he’s more likely to cause prices to surge.
That can partly be attributed to Trump’s pledges to impose across-the-board tariffs on imports, which appear to be growing more radical over time. Earlier in the year, Trump suggested 10% tariffs across the board. Then he started floating the idea of tariffs reaching up to 20% and even as a replacement for income tax.
Adam Hersh, a senior economist with Economic Policy Institute Action, likened that latter idea “to dropping a nuclear bomb on a hurricane” in an interview this summer. According to Hersh’s estimates, border taxes on imports might possibly have to reach around 130% or higher in order to have a chance to generate the revenue that comes from income tax. That, in turn, would exorbitantly raise the prices of many imported goods that Americans use every. On top of all this, there’s a growing recognition that Trump’s appetite for a trade war with China is as hearty as ever — and that there’s little anyone can do to stop him if he’s president.
It’s also possible that some economists are developing faith in Harris to be more conventionally friendly to business and free trade than Biden, based on signals from her campaign. Harris’ campaign has reportedly sought a great deal of input from business executives while developing its economic policies, and those executives are mostly going to advocate fiercely against trade barriers and economic nationalism. Harris also appeared to walk back a plan to ban price gouging in response to criticism that it could lead to inflationary price controls.
Setting aside that I find it disheartening that Harris seems keen on allowing corporate influence to shape her policy outlook, her business-friendliness is making economists more sanguine about her ability to avoid inflation. Additionally, Harris has unveiled serious plans to expand affordable housing.
The Journal’s poll is good news for Harris. Now a key task of the campaign is to make sure that ordinary citizens — especially the coveted low-information swing voter — understand that she should be the obvious preference for people worried about how expensive everything is.
