A number of Democratic emissaries to the business world are arguing this week that a President Kamala Harris will be good for business — despite unanswered questions about her economic agenda and the unpopularity of some of her ideas in C-suites.
“She’s going to fight for you, she’s going to fight for all of us,” Tony West, senior vice president and general counsel at Uber ( UBER ), said of his sister-in-law Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The most direct business case to date came Tuesday from former American Express ( AXP ) CEO Kenneth Chenault.
He talked about Harris helping businesses through the lens of democracy and overall stability, saying “as a business leader, I’ve seen firsthand why democracy is so important: it forms the foundation upon which American business and our economy depend.”
“Kamala Harris gets it,” he added.
Yet that limited reach to the business world has clearly been complicated in recent days by certain Harris proposals, including elements of a recently released cost-of-living plan. Her idea of a ban on food price gouging leads many to compare it to price controls.
Another idea that is sure to be unpopular in business is that Harris is helping raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. Large corporations currently pay a federal rate of 21%.
“What you’re seeing is the left’s version of economic populism,” RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas noted in a Yahoo Finance appearance this week, saying most of those ideas are unlikely to happen even if she wins.
But Brusuelas added that there are some ideas in her proposal that business likes, including efforts to use tax incentives to build 3 million new homes.
The lineup of speakers this week in Chicago included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, former investment banker (and current Maryland governor) Wes Moore and others.
They often reverted to a nuanced case based in part on what they say is Harris’ potential to improve the American business climate, along with a heavy dollop of criticism of what Donald Trump would bring if he wins instead.
One theme came up again and again: deeply unpopular ideas from Trump to push historically high tariffs even higher if he wins.
The Trump campaign has responded this week, claiming that Harris is so anti-business that the only question is whether she is a socialist or a communist.
Trump himself has taken to calling her “comrade Kamala,” including at an event Monday aimed at highlighting economic problems and making America “prosperous again.”
A case for Harris
Commerce Secretary Raimondo is the Biden administration’s most direct contact to many CEOs.
She has leveraged her previous career in venture capitalism and a record as the economy-minded governor of Rhode Island to gain some credibility in C-suites in recent years.
When it was her turn to speak Monday, she tried to pass some of that standing on to Harris.
“We turned it around,” Raimondo said of changing the business climate in Rhode Island, adding “with a pro-business pro-worker agenda, Kamala Harris has the same agenda.”
Raimondo argued that Harris’ economic vision would reward entrepreneurs “and she will create an economy of fair competition free of monopolies, monopolies that crush workers and small businesses and startups.”
A similar case was removed from the campaign stage.
Harris aides told Bloomberg, for example, that the vice president would support measures to expand the crypto industry.
They also highlighted some of the positive reactions to Harris’ discussion of housing in the latest cost of living plan. A Washington Post essay by Jim Parrott of the Urban Institute and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics was particularly touted.
The two economists wrote that Harris’ housing plan could “change the economics” of the sector and would amount to “the most aggressive push on the supply side since the national investment in housing that followed World War II.”
But any pro-business message may have remained odd at times in a Democratic assembly that more often than not featured speakers eager to slam business leaders.
Perhaps the sharpest contrast came Tuesday night, when Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont first offered his message, including that “we need an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class.”
But the next speaker was JB Pritzker, a wealthy businessman and member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain.
The message from the now-Illinois governor was an extreme contrast.
“Donald Trump thinks we should trust him on the economy because he claims to be very rich, but take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is only rich in one thing — stupidity,” Pritzker said.
“Let’s be clear, it’s not the wake that’s limiting economic growth,” he added, “it’s strange.”
Draw a contrast with Donald Trump
The message from these speakers also leaned heavily on Trump — specifically his tariff plans.
“You think inflation was bad during COVID, just wait until you see the inflation associated with it,” offered Rep. Jim Himes — a former Goldman Sachs ( GS ) banker — on the sidelines of the convention during a live Politico event.
Trump “wants a sales tax that will exaggerate inflation,” added Raimondo, who was one of several speakers who compared Trump’s push for 60% tariffs on China and 10-20% on other trading partners as akin to a sales tax.
An estimate by Brendan Duke of the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that the maximum version of the Trump plan (a 20% general tariff combined with 60% on Chinese goods) could mean additional annual costs of $3,900 for a typical middle-class family.
That number has been cited over and over and over again this week in several speeches and in a new video from the Harris/Walz campaign.
Whether that pro-business message will take off in the coming weeks remains to be seen, but the Democratic Party was clearly trying to emphasize that a Harris administration would care about both business leaders and their employees.
“She understands that it is possible, indeed necessary, for a president to be both pro-business and pro-worker,” Chenault said in his speech.
It’s just, he added, that “she knows the way not to do that is to give people like me a tax cut.”
Ben Werschkul is the Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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