Harris and Trump offer worlds-apart contrasts on top issues in presidential race

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced U.S. President Joe Biden atop the presidential ticket, but his “finish the job” campaign mantra can still largely apply to her top policy goals. She’s promising to continue a lot of what Biden was doing during the past four years if she’s elected to four of her own.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump, for his part, is itching to get back to the White House and accomplish what he didn’t during his first term.

Since Biden stepped down last month, the vice president has announced few major policy proposals beyond a new push to prevent price gouging by food producers and grocers and plans to cut taxes for families, attempt to bring down homebuying and rental prices and reduce medical debt. Harris also used a recent rally in Las Vegas, where the economy runs on the hospitality industry, to call for ending taxes on tips paid to restaurant, hotel and other service employees. That came more than a month after Trump used his own Las Vegas rally to promise the same on tips.

Despite her lack of specifics on policy, the vice president has committed generally to some major policy positions on various matters, promising to sign sweeping legislation that’s unlikely to clear Congress.

Those include measures codifying the federal right to an abortion, increasing the federal minimum wage, imposing an assault weapons ban, requiring universal background checks for firearm purchases and advancing several long-stalled voting rights measures.

While details are still rather vague, there’s no doubt that whoever prevails in November will seek to shape the landscape of American life in ways wholly distinct from their opponent.

On nearly every issue, the choices — if the winner gets his or her way — are sharply defined.

The onward march of regulation and incentives to restrain climate change, or a slow walk if not an about-face. Higher taxes on the super rich, or cuts to benefit high-wage earners. Abortion rights reaffirmed, or left to states to restrict or allow as each decides. Another attempt to legislate border security and orderly entry into the country, or massive deportations. A commitment to stand with Ukraine or let go.

Here’s where each candidate stands on 10 top issues:

HARRIS: The vice president has called on Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing in federal law abortion access, a right that stood for nearly 50 years before being overturned by the Supreme Court. Like Biden, Harris has criticized bans on abortion in Republican-controlled states and promised as president to block any potential nationwide ban should one clear a future GOP-run Congress. Harris was the Democrats’ most visible champion of abortion rights even while Biden was still in the race. She has promoted the administration’s efforts short of federal law — including steps to protect women who travel to obtain abortions and limit how law enforcement collects medical records.

TRUMP: The former president often brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. After dodging questions about when in pregnancy he believes the procedure should be restricted, Trump announced last spring that decisions on access and cutoffs should be left to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban into law. But he’s declined to say whether he would try to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. He told Time magazine that it should also be left up to states to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

HARRIS: As a senator from California, the vice president was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal, a sweeping series of proposals meant to swiftly move the U.S. to fully green energy that is championed by the Democratic Party’s most progressive wing. Harris also said during her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign that she opposed offshore drilling for oil and hydraulic fracturing. But during her three and a half years as vice president, Harris has adopted more moderate positions, focusing instead on implementing the climate provisions of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. That provided nearly US$375 billion for things like financial incentives for electric cars and clean energy projects. The Biden administration has also enlisted more than 20,000 young people in a national “Climate Corps,” a Peace Corps-like program to promote conservation through tasks such as weatherizing homes and repairing wetlands. Despite that, it’s unlikely that the U.S. will be on track to meet Biden’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 — a benchmark that Harris hasn’t talked about in the early part of her own White House bid.

TRUMP: His mantra for one of his top policy priorities: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Trump, who in the past cast climate change as a “hoax” and harbors a particular disdain for wind power, says it’s his goal for the U.S. to have the cheapest energy and electricity in the world. He’d increase oil drilling on public lands, offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers, speed the approval of natural gas pipelines and roll back the Biden administration’s aggressive efforts to get people to switch to electric cars, which he argues have a place but shouldn’t be forced on consumers. He has also pledged to re-exit the Paris Climate Accords, end wind subsidies and eliminate regulations imposed and proposed by the Biden administration targeting energy-inefficient kinds of lightbulbs, stoves, dishwashers and shower heads.

HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has decried Trump as a threat to the nation’s democracy. But, in attacking her opponent, the vice president has leaned more heavily into her personal background as a prosecutor and contrasted that with Trump being found guilty of 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case and in being found liable for fraudulent business practices and sexual abuse in civil court. The vice president has also talked less frequently than Biden did about Trump’s denial that he lost the 2020 presidential election and his spurring on the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. When she’s interrupted during rallies with supporters’ “lock him up” chants directed at Trump, Harris responds that the courts can “handle that” and “our job is to beat him in November.”

TRUMP: After refusing to accept his loss to Biden in 2020, Trump hasn’t committed to accepting the results this time. He’s repeatedly promised to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants jailed for assaulting police officers and other crimes during the attack on the Capitol. He vows to overhaul the Justice Department and FBI “from the ground up,” aggrieved by the criminal charges the department has brought against him. He also promises to deploy the U.S. National Guard to cities such as Chicago that are struggling with violent crime, and in response to protests, and has also vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Biden.

HARRIS: Like Biden, Harris has campaigned hard against “Project 2025,” a plan authored by leading conservatives to move as swiftly as possible to dramatically remake the federal government and push it to the right if Trump wins back the White House. She is also part of an administration that is already taking steps to make it harder for any mass firings of civil servants to occur. In April, the Office of Personnel Management issued a new rule that would ban federal workers from being reclassified as political appointees or other at-will employees, thus making them easier to dismiss. That was in response to Schedule F, a 2020 executive order from Trump that reclassified tens of thousands of federal workers to make firing them easier.

TRUMP: The former president has sought to distance himself from “Project 2025,” despite his close ties to many of its key architects. He has nonetheless vowed an overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, which he has long blamed for blocking his first term agenda, saying: “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” The former president plans to reissue the Schedule F order stripping civil service protections. He says he’d then move to fire “rogue bureaucrats,” including those who ”weaponized our justice system,” and the “warmongers and America-Last globalists in the Deep State, the Pentagon, the U.S. State Department, and the national security industrial complex.” Trump has also pledged to terminate the U.S. Education Department and wants to curtail the independence of regulatory agencies like the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

HARRIS: Attempting to defuse a GOP line of political attack, the vice president has talked up her experience as California attorney general, saying she walked drug smuggler tunnels and successfully prosecuted gangs that moved narcotics and people across the border. Early in his term, Biden made Harris his administration’s point person on the root causes of migration. Trump and top Republicans now blame Harris for a situation at the U.S.-Mexico border that they say is out of control due to policies that were too lenient. Harris has attempted to counter that by arguing that a bipartisan Senate compromise that would have included tougher asylum standards and hiring more border agents, immigration judges and asylum officers was poised to clear Congress before Trump came out in opposition to it. Harris now says that Trump “talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk” on immigration. The vice president has endorsed comprehensive immigration reform, seeking pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, with a faster track for young immigrants living in the country illegally who arrived as children.

TRUMP: The former president promises to mount the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history — an operation that could involve detention camps and the U.S. National Guard. He’d bring back policies he put in place during his first term, like the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42, which placed curbs on migrants on public health grounds. And he’d revive and expand the travel ban that originally targeted citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, he pledged new “ideological screening” for immigrants to bar “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs.” He’d also try to deport people who are in the U.S. legally but harbor “jihadist sympathies.” He’d seek to end birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. whose parents are both in the country illegally.

HARRIS: Harris says Israel has a right to defend itself, and she’s repeatedly decried Hamas as a terrorist organization. But the vice president might also have helped defuse some backlash from progressives by being more vocal about the need to better protect civilians during fighting in Gaza, where the civilian death toll has now exceeded 40,000. Like Biden, Harris supports a proposed hostage for extended ceasefire deal that aims to bring all remaining hostages and Israeli dead home. Biden and Harris say the deal could lead to a permanent end to the grinding nine-month war and they have endorsed a two-state solution, which would have Israel existing alongside an independent Palestinian state.

TRUMP: The former president has expressed support for Israel’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas, but he’s also been critical of some of Israel’s tactics. He says the country must finish the job quickly and get back to peace. He has called for more aggressive responses to pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses and applauded police efforts to clear encampments. Trump also proposes to revoke the student visas of those who espouse antisemitic or anti-American views.

HARRIS: During her rallies, Harris accuses Trump and his party of seeking to roll back a long list of freedoms including the ability “to love who you love openly and with pride.” She leads audiences in chants of “We’re not going back.” While her campaign has yet to produce specifics on its plans, she’s been part of a Biden administration that regularly denounces discrimination and attacks against the LGBTQ2S+ community. Early in Biden’s term, his administration reversed an executive order from Trump that had largely banned transgender people from military service, and his U.S. Education Department issued a rule that says Title IX, the 1972 law that was passed to protect women’s rights, also bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That rule was silent on the issue of transgender athletes.

TRUMP: The former president has pledged to keep transgender women out of women’s sports and says he will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that “only two genders,” as determined at birth, are recognized by the United States. He promises to “defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology.” As part of his crackdown on gender-affirming care, he would declare that any health care provider that participates in the “chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth” no longer meets federal health and safety standards and won’t get federal money. He’d take similarly punitive steps in schools against any teacher or school official who “suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.” Trump would support a national prohibition of hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors and bar transgender people from military service.

HARRIS: The vice president has yet to specify how her positions on Russia’s war with Ukraine might differ from Biden’s, other than to praise the president’s efforts to rebuild alliances unraveled by Trump, particularly NATO, a critical bulwark against Russian aggression. The Biden administration has pledged unceasing support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The government has sent tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine, including a tranche of aid that totaled US$61 billion in weapons, ammunition and other assistance that is expected to last through the end of this year. The administration has maintained that continuing U.S. assistance is critical because Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not stop at invading Ukraine. Harris has said previously that it would be foolish to risk global alliances the U.S. has established and decried Putin’s “brutality.”

TRUMP: The former president has repeatedly taken issue with U.S. aid to Ukraine and says he will continue to “fundamentally reevaluate” the mission and purpose of the NATO alliance if he returns to office. He has claimed, without explanation, that he will be able to end the war before his inauguration by bringing both sides to the negotiating table. (His approach seems to hinge on Ukraine giving up at least some of its Russian-occupied territory in exchange for a ceasefire.) On NATO, he has assailed member nations for years for failing to hit agreed-upon military spending targets. Trump drew alarms this year when he said that, as president, he had warned leaders that he would not only refuse to defend nations that don’t hit those targets, but “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.”

HARRIS: Though she was critical of free trade deals before becoming vice president, Harris has more recently offered no signs that she’ll oppose Biden’s policies. That might mean adhering to some protectionist practices that offer similarities with Trump. Biden, for instance, endorsed a tripling of tariffs on Chinese steel, a move that would shield U.S. producers from cheaper imports. In May, the Biden-Harris administration said it would raise the tariff rate on steel and aluminum to 25 per cent from 7.5 per cent. Biden has also said he opposes the proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, because it is “vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.”

TRUMP: The former president wants a dramatic expansion of tariffs on nearly all imported foreign goods, saying that “we’re going to have 10 per cent to 20 per cent tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.” Penalties would increase if trade partners manipulate their currencies or engage in other unfair trading practices. He would also urge Congress to pass legislation giving the president authority to impose a reciprocal tariff on any country that imposes one on the U.S. Much of his trade agenda has focused on China. Trump has proposed phasing out Chinese imports of essential goods including electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals and wants to ban Chinese companies from owning U.S. infrastructure in sectors such as energy, technology and farmland. Whether higher tariffs come from a Biden administration or a Trump one, they are likely to raise prices for consumers who have already faced higher costs from inflation.

HARRIS: The vice president has promised to work with state entities to cancel US$7 billion of medical debt for up to three million qualifying Americans and plans to push Congress to make permanent a US$3,600 per child tax credit approved through 2025 for eligible families. She also wants to offer a new US$6,000 tax credit for those with newborn children, and cut taxes for frontline workers and on healthcare plans offered on the marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. Harris says her administration will expand tax credits for first-time homebuyers and push to build three million new housing units in four years, while wiping out taxes on tips and endorsing steeper taxes on corporations. That last part mirrors Biden, who proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent and the corporate minimum tax to 21 per cent as a matter of “fundamental fairness” that will bring in more money to invest in Americans. The current corporate rate is 21 per cent and the corporate minimum, raised under the Inflation Reduction Act, is at 15 per cent for companies making more than US$1 billion a year. Harris has called for restoring the child tax credit that was enacted under the 2021 COVID-19 relief package, but has since expired.

TRUMP: The former president has promised to extend the 2017 tax cuts that he signed into law and are set to expire at the end of 2025. That package cut the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent and roughly doubled the standard deduction and child tax credit. Those elements will remain until and unless a new law changes them, but many other tax cuts in Trump’s package will lapse without further action by Congress. Trump says he wants to trim the corporate tax rate further — to as low as 15 per cent — and repeal any tax increases that occurred under Biden. Trump also promised to eliminate taxes on tipped income — though doing so would probably require congressional approval.