Representative image.
| Photo Credit: AP

Kamala Harris blasted Donald Trump as the “biggest loser” on the economy and a friend of billionaires Wednesday as the election rivals laid out competing plans on the top issue for many US voters.

In a speech on the economy and then again in her first major solo interview, the Democrat warned that Mr. Trump’s plans to bring back huge tariffs on foreign imports would hurt middle class Americans in their wallets.

Republican Trump for his part doubled down on his protectionist vision — but spent as much time on threatening to blow Iran to “smithereens” after US intelligence warned of threats from Tehran against his life.

The vice president and the former president are neck-and-neck in the polls and are both reaching out to undecided voters on key issues like the economy with less than six weeks until election day.

Ms. Harris vowed to “chart a new way forward” in a speech in Pittsburgh, an industrial city in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, with her rhetoric focusing on lowering prices for Americans.

“For Donald Trump, our economy works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers. Not those who actually build them. Not those who wire them. Not those who mop the floors,” she said.

She said nearly 200,000 factory jobs moved abroad during Trump’s time in the White House, “making Trump one of the biggest losers ever on manufacturing.”

In her interview with the left-leaning MSNBC, Ms. Harris then criticized the tariff plans that Mr. Trump has laid out over the past two days, which would be a return to the policies of the Republican’s first term in office.

“You don’t just throw around the idea of tariffs across the board,” said Ms. Harris. “He’s just not very serious.”

The interview was Ms. Harris’s first on her own since replacing US President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee in July. She gave a joint interview with running mate Tim Walz in August.

‘Smithereens’

Mr. Trump’s campaign said her speech was “full of lies” and that she had already had three and a half years as part of the Biden administration to tackle problems like low prices.

The Republican is making similar pledges to boost American manufacturing, based largely on his plans to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign imports.

“You’re going to have protection from them coming in, because we’re going to put on from 50 to 200 percent tariffs,” Mr. Trump told supporters in Mint Hill, North Carolina, another crucial battleground state.

But the ex-commander-in-chief spent a good part of his speech talking about the threats to his life — from the two assassination attempts he has escaped in the space of two months to threats by Iran.

“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens,” Trump said.

Mr. Trump meanwhile plans to return on October 5 to the Pennsylvania town of Butler where a gunman made an attempt on his life at a rally in July, his campaign said Wednesday.

A gunman accused of planning to kill Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course just over a week ago, Ryan Routh, was indicted Tuesday for the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate.

The twin assassination attempts came amid one of the most dramatic US election campaigns in modern political history, in a dizzying chain of events since a disastrous debate in June led to Biden quitting the White House race over concerns about his age.

Mr. Biden told ABC talk show “The View” on Wednesday that he was now “at peace with my decision” — even if he insisted he could still have beaten Trump.

The outgoing president criticized Trump, saying there was “not a social redeeming value” to the Republican, and said his advice to Ms. Harris to win was to “be herself.”

A seagull walks in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, U.S., September 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW

U.S. congressional leaders announced a deal on Sunday (September 22, 2024) to extend funding for the federal government until mid-December, averting a contentious shutdown just weeks ahead of the election.

Government funding expires at the end of September, and with Congress nowhere near an agreement on a full-year budget, a stopgap measure — known as a “continuing resolution” (CR) — was widely expected.

However, Republicans had demanded for weeks that any extension of funds be linked to new requirements that voters prove their American citizenship, a push motivated by Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud in US elections.

A vote on a bill combining the voting provisions with a six-month funding extension failed on Wednesday in the Republican-controlled House.

The deal announced Sunday (September 22) excludes the voting provisions and extends funding only until December 20.

That still pushes the funding debate until well after the November 5 election, in which control of the House, Senate and presidency are expected to be decided by thin margins.

The next Congress is seated shortly after the New Year, while the inauguration of the next president — Republican Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris — takes place on January 20.

“While I am pleased bipartisan negotiations quickly led to a government funding agreement free of cuts and poison pills, this same agreement could have been done two weeks ago,” Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said in a statement.

The bill, which the House is expected to vote on this week, would also provide an additional $231 million for the US Secret Service, a major increase following the two attempts on Trump’s life.

It also provides $47 million in additional funding for security in Washington for the presidential inauguration.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson described the bill in a letter to colleagues as “a very narrow, bare-bones CR including only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

Mr. Trump had previously called for Republicans to reject any continuing resolution unless they got “every ounce” of the voting provisions they wanted.

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Mr. Johnson said on September 22.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to keep its key short-term interest rate unchanged when it meets next week. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An inflation gauge that is closely monitored by the Federal Reserve showed price increases remained elevated in September amid brisk consumer spending and strong economic growth.

Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that prices rose 0.4% from August to September, the same as the previous month. And compared with 12 months earlier, inflation was unchanged at 3.4%.

Taken as a whole, the figures the government issued Friday show a still-surprisingly resilient consumer, willing to spend briskly enough to power the economy even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates. Spread across the economy, the strength of that spending is itself helping to fuel inflation.

In a cautionary note, consumers relied increasingly on savings to fuel their shopping last month. Income growth slowed. Adjusted for inflation, income actually fell slightly.

Yet spending jumped 0.4%, after adjusting for inflation. The saving rate fell to 3.4%, down from the 6%-plus average before the pandemic.

“That is clearly unsustainable, and we expect spending growth will slow sharply in the quarters ahead,” said Michael Pearce, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a consulting firm.

September’s month-to-month price increase exceeds a pace consistent with the Fed’s 2% annual inflation target, and it compounds already higher costs for such necessities as rent, food and gas. The Fed is widely expected to keep its key short-term interest rate unchanged when it meets next week. But its policymakers have flagged the risk that stronger growth could keep inflation persistently high and require further rate hikes to quell it.

Since March 2022, the central bank has raised its key rate from near zero to roughly 5.4% in a concerted drive to tame inflation. Annual inflation, as measured by the separate and more widely followed consumer price index, has tumbled from the 9.1% peak it reached in June of last year.

On Thursday, the government reported that strong consumer spending drove the economy to a robust 4.9% annual growth rate in the July-September quarter, the best such showing in nearly two years. Heavy spending by consumers typically leads businesses to charge higher prices. In Friday’s report on inflation, the government also said that consumer spending last month jumped a robust 0.7%.

Spending on services jumped, Friday’s report said, led by greater outlays for international travel, housing and utilities.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” prices rose 0.3% from August to September, above the 0.1% uptick the previous month. Compared with a year earlier, though, core inflation eased to 3.7%, the slowest rise since May 2021 and down from 3.8% in August.

A key reason why the Fed may keep rates unchanged through year’s end is that September’s 3.7% year-over-year rise in core inflation matches the central bank’s forecast for this quarter.

With core prices already at that level, Fed officials will likely believe they can “proceed carefully,” as Chair Jerome Powell has said they will do, and monitor how the economy evolves in coming months.

Still, the data in Friday’s report showed that while prices for many goods, including cars, furniture and appliances are actually falling, the price increases for services remain chronically high.

Restaurant meals, for example, rose 0.4% in price from August to September, up from a 0.2% rise the previous month. They are now 5.8% more expensive than they were a year earlier.

One measure the Fed is monitoring closely — services prices, excluding energy and housing — jumped 0.4% last month, after rising only 0.1% in August. The Fed watches that gauge because it tracks prices in a set of industries that are labor-intensive and particularly sensitive to rising wages. Higher wages can fuel inflation if businesses pass on their higher labor costs by raising prices.

A solid job market has helped fuel consumer spending, with wages and salaries having outpaced inflation for most of this year. Yet Friday’s report showed that the growth in overall income — a category that, in addition to wages, includes interest income and government payments — has slowed. Adjusted for inflation, after-tax income slipped 0.1% in September, the third straight monthly decline. Shrinking incomes could weaken spending and growth in the months ahead.