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Since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic presidential ticket, she’s faced criticism from voters who say they don’t know what she stands for. But we know two Bloomberg reporters who do: California bureau chief Karen Breslau, who’s been following Harris’ career for two decades, and Josh Wingrove, who covers her campaign. 

Today on the show, they join host Sarah Holder to discuss what we know about Harris’ economic message and what a Harris presidency could mean for everything from domestic taxes to global trade.

Further listening: Donald Trump Sits Down With Bloomberg Businessweek

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

Sarah Holder: When Kamala Harris first ran for president in 2019, her campaign fizzled before the first votes were cast… some said she struggled to gain traction because voters couldn’t figure out what she stood for.

And in the two months since she’s taken over the Democratic ticket, the focus is back on that question.

NBC: I think voters do have a lot of questions about the vice president’s policies…

Holder: Harris became the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. And now, voters across the country have to get to know Harris all over again. 

So we wanted to dig into what we do know when it comes to the one issue most voters say is driving their choice: The economy.

Today on the show, I speak with Bloomberg politics reporter Josh Wingrove, who’s been covering Harris at the White House and on the trail. And with California bureau chief Karen Breslau, who’s been tracking Harris’ political moves since she first interviewed her back in 2005.

We piece together what we know about Harris’ economic message, and what a Harris presidency could mean for everything from the domestic economy to global trade.

This is the Big Take DC. I’m Sarah Holder.

Holder: Thank you, Josh and Karen, for being here. So I wanted to start with a really basic question. 

Harris talks a lot about building what she calls an “opportunity economy.” We’ve heard her mention it several times during her debate with former President Donald Trump and in her rally speeches. What does she mean by an opportunity economy?

Wingrove: I mean, she’s talking about equity. And this is stitched through a lot of the things that she’s done. If you look into her record, things that have animated her in her time as vice president and before include making sure that people who want to start small businesses, in particular, people of color who want to start small businesses, have access to capital.

I think we’d be missing part of the story if we don’t draw that link between what she sees as fundamental sort of inequities. If certain business proposals are hitting a wall because minority lenders don’t have the money to get to them and big lenders aren’t giving them the time of day, she sees that as something worth tackling.

You see it with her call for a wider child tax credit. Harris, in particular, has talked about $6,000 dollars in a tax credit for people who have a baby, you know, in the first year of a child’s life. As a father of a young child. I can attest to how expensive that can be. Let me tell you. [laughs]

Holder: [laugh] Well I want to understand where that focus on equity and opportunity comes from. Karen, you first spoke with Harris back in 2005, and you’ve interviewed her over the years since.

Breslau: Thank you to the Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris. 

Harris: Thank you.

Breslau: Thank you all. [applause]

Holder: That was from a 2012 interview you did with her in Sacramento for an organization called She Shares. You’ve really seen her full arc on the political stage. What do you see as her most consistent priority? We’re seeing things like that call for a child tax credit that Josh mentioned. What is the through line that really drives her?

Breslau: It’s clearly kids. There is something at every turn in her career and in her life. She has come around to who are the powerless, who are the voiceless, right?

Her messaging has been all over the place. But in terms of how do you use power, whether it’s the power of a prosecutor, whether it’s the power of a regulator, whether it’s economic power, who’s it going to benefit? And she always would ask people, how’s this going to play on the streets?

You know, if it’s a mortgage settlement, are these loans going to be forgiven? How are these loan discharges going to affect whether it’s students, whether it’s homeowners? Where does the money end up? 

She sees power fundamentally from the outside in and from the bottom up. She was an outsider in San Francisco politics. She came from Oakland, from Berkeley, just across the bay, but a world apart right there. San Francisco is a clubby Democratic city where power is dynastic. It’s connected to families, the Pelosis, Gavin Newsom, the current governor who was her kind of her frenemy coming up in San Francisco politics. But now it is, it is very different. She is the sitting vice president. 

Wingrove: And this is one of the trickiest things. Harris is campaigning both as an incumbent and as a change agent, right? For instance, political history is littered with people who make pledges about housing starts and don’t get anywhere near them. 

She’s proposed expanding assistance, it would require Congress, to first time home buyers to $25,000. We’re talking direct subsidy is what she wants to do. She wants to talk about building three million new units of housing over the course of her first term.

The Republicans then turn around and say, ‘The price of housing has gone up under the Biden Harris administration! You’re in the government now. Why don’t you do something about it?’

Holder: Josh, you spoke of the challenge Harris faces running both as this change maker and as an incumbent. Yesterday, the Fed cut rates by half a percentage point, indicating that they feel like inflation is getting under control. 

But under the current Biden-Harris administration, many Americans say they aren’t feeling good about the economy—that gas and grocery prices are too high. What has Harris said about addressing inflation?

Wingrove: Harris has chalked a lot of this up to corporate greed, and said that grocery companies and chains and food providers are, in her mind, colluding to keep prices high, even after we’ve seen leveling off or even disinflation, and deflation of grocery prices. Essentially, she is trying to not take the blame on that.

Breaking from Biden is something that’s tricky for her. Right? She’s not going to want to stab him in the back. But there are differences. She’s a 59 year old who grew up in the Bay Area. He’s an 81 year old raised in Claymont, Delaware, just outside of Philadelphia.

They see the world differently. One thing that has struck us traveling with her, is Harris does not really go to, like manufacturing places. Biden loves going anywhere with a hard hat. She doesn’t. She goes to small businesses. She goes to like a spice store. 

WFAA – Harris: I finally got all of the debate prep to look at these spices. [laughs] Best part of debate prep so far. 

Wingrove: Biden sees manufacturing as this sort of silver bullet for a litmus test and how the economy is doing. I think for Harris, if you had to pick one, you’d pick small businesses. If they are thriving, she thinks the economy is doing well.

Harris: Right now the tax deduction for startup companies for small businesses is $5,000. I’m growing it to 50,000.  Because nobody can start a small business on $5,000, right? 

Holder: And Karen, who has influenced her policy views? Who has she leaned on as she went through her political rise? 

Breslau: Two figures. Her sister, Maya Harris, who was the head of the Northern California ACLU, who is a very conventional liberal, and Maya’s, husband, Tony West, who is an attorney also comes from, you know, has a civil rights perspective. He was in the Obama DOJ, but it is also very rooted in the business world of the Bay area. who was most recently chief counsel at Uber, is currently on leave. 

I was struck by, in her convention speech, when she called out creating a fair playing field for founders, which is a code word, you know, here in in the Bay Area for the people who generate money enormous wealth. Giant companies, but they all start small, right?

When she was attorney general of California, she went around and visited then-tiny startups, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Palantir, the maker of, of national security software, she’s very drawn to the innovators, to the upstarts, to the disruptors.

Holder: But just how will those influences, and Harris’ focus on equity, shape her stances on the big issues: like tariffs, taxes, and antitrust policy? I dig into that with Josh after the break.

Josh, you mentioned that Harris blames inflation on corporate greed, and the Biden administration has made antitrust regulation a cornerstone of its economic policy. What do we know about how Harris thinks about antitrust and tech regulation in particular?

Wingrove: We know that she’s biting her tongue. This is a campaign for Harris of keeping doors open. She has even chosen to eat crow on flip flopping on things, on backtracking for more forward leaning positions that she held not that long ago, I would add. But I don’t mean that to be glib. She’s just trying to, again, build that sort of broader coalition of folks.

And so, one thing she’s declined to say is how she feels about current officials in the Biden-Harris administration, including Lina Khan, the head of the FTC, who’s something of a folk hero for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Jonathan Kanter at DOJ, and Gary Gensler, who has become controversial in particular for the crypto community. So there’s all these sort of question marks swirling around these three figures who are for different reasons, lightning rods.

I personally think, looking at Harris’ background, and the way that she saw her role as AG, that she’s cut from the same cloth as the Biden-Harris administration has been when it comes to antitrust enforcement. So, I think the betting odds are that this is going to continue. But I think she just, right now, is not wanting to do anything that upends any apple cart, however tiny, as she tries to get, you know, 270 electoral college votes. 

Holder: Let’s talk about global economic policy for a minute. Harris talked about competition with China in the recent debate, for example. 

Harris:  A policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century.

Holder: How would Harris approach trade and tariffs? 

Wingrove: Her approach would build from Biden’s. But it contrasts to what Trump is talking about. I don’t think people have really reflected on what Trump’s tariff proposals would mean for American companies, American consumers, American supply chains. There would be winners, for sure. There would also be another side to that coin. 

Holder: Is it consumers would be the losers?

Wingrove: Consumers would certainly pay higher prices if across the board tariffs were applied in America, a country that imports so many of its goods.

And so if you’re someone that wants to remake the American economy, what Trump’s proposing is not the status quo. And so Harris choosing essentially a version of the status quo is itself a policy choice. And so what she’s saying is that she will be, when it comes to the global economy, an agent of,  process and predictability, and she thinks Trump is an agent of chaos, throwing tariffs left, right, and center. 

Biden has not avoided tariffs. In fact, he’s kept Trump’s China tariffs, for instance, in place and even added to them. Keeping Trump’s tariffs in place was mostly a China play, and there’s broad bipartisan agreement that China is a threat economically to the United States. When Trump talks about across the board tariffs, that is a different thing. 

Holder: I mean, it’s one thing to want to carry out some of the goals and agendas that were set under the Biden administration. But another is whether and when and how she can really carry them out. Josh, What will Harris be able to deliver on that Biden couldn’t, or what are some of the challenges that might stand in her way?

Wingrove: Barack Obama took office with Democrats holding the House and Senate, Donald Trump took office with Republicans holding the House and Senate, Joe Biden took office with Democrats holding the House and Senate.

It does not look like Kamala Harris will. She will have immediately less power than any of her three predecessors, and of course, many presidents before them. And so, immediately, she will face worries that Democrats will wonder, ‘why aren’t you doing anything?’ And the answer will be she doesn’t have the votes.

For example, there’s a ticking tax hike hanging over this election. The Trump tax cuts expire next year. If no one does anything, which is often what happens in Washington, people’s taxes are going up. A lot of people’s taxes are going up. And so, right now, this presidential race, will determine who either chooses to rewrite the tax code or lets that ticking tax hike go off.

What Trump is saying is he wants to lower corporate taxes. He wants to lower other people’s taxes, including on tips. Assuming that there were not widespread cuts with it, which of course there might be, we’d be talking about a much larger deficit. Harris has talked about raising corporate taxes, raising taxes on the wealthy, as well as high earners, and changing how they’re taxed.

Harris: Billionaires and big corporations must pay their fair share in taxes.

Wingrove: There are ways for people to, like, lower the Medicare tax that they pay, for instance. She wants to close that. She thinks it’s a loophole. She’s talking about certain tax proposals on high earners and the wealthy, which are, of course, not always necessarily the same thing, and corporations. 

But a lot of this will come down to Congress. And this is one of the big things hanging over Harris. If push comes to shove next year, if she is the president and she is in some hard fought, bare knuckled tax negotiation on the Hill, what are the things that Harris is really going to dig in on?

Is it raising the corporate tax rate to 28%? Is it enacting a stronger child tax credit. Her history suggests probably the latter. She’s probably more fungible on the corporate tax rate. She’s going to try to want to do things that dig in on families.

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