The key to winning the US election is staring Trump in the face

By making the economy a secondary issue, the former president is missing a trick

The American election is upon us and the presidential candidates are making their closing arguments. Kamala Harris still wants to talk about abortion. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has decided to make his final pitch about immigration and the loss of control at the US-Mexico border.
Harris’s emphasis on abortion makes sense. The overturn of Roe v Wade continues to help the Democratic party electorally, because the majority of Americans agree that women across the country should have some level of access to abortion services.
But Trump’s focus on the border is more curious. Speak to voters already on the Trump train, and they’ll tell you immigration is easily the most important issue in this election. They believe Trump will win or lose his third run for the presidency depending on how widely exposed the border crisis is in the run-up to election day.
Yet Trump doesn’t need to win round the faithful. His closing remarks in this campaign cycle need to speak more broadly to America. And Americans are clear: the overwhelming issue for them in this election is the economy.
That voters want to talk about the economy should be a gift to the former president. The incumbent never managed to win the public over to “Bidenomics” – which turned out, in practice, to boost headline growth figures but not voter support.
The massive subsidies and state spending did not convince workers they were better off. Rather, it made them feel increasingly financially unstable, while the link between mass-spending and inflation became abundantly clear as prices spiralled out of control.
The Vice President wasn’t just a key player in Joe Biden’s economic gamble. “There is not a thing that comes to mind”, Harris says, that she would have done differently during their three and a half years in the White House.
Usually voter frustration with the economy would be enough to propel the challenger past the incumbent and into the Oval Office. And frustrated they are: according to Gallup polling, US voters rank the economy as “most important” out of 22 issues (immigration ranks fifth, abortion ranks ninth).
But Trump has even more factors working in his favour. According to the same poll from earlier this month, Trump is perceived by voters “as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy” by 54pc to 45pc. It’s more evidence of what has emerged as a big factor in this election: Americans are nostalgic for Trump’s economy.
So why isn’t he hammering home his economic messaging? Speaking at a town hall event in Pennsylvania last weekend, I watched the presidential candidate pivot to immigration at almost every opportunity.
While plenty of the questions were set up to talk about the economy, the bulk of the time was spent on the border instead. Yes, it brought in the cheers – but for audiences watching at home, plenty of the economic points were muddled, or not made at all.
One problem is that Trump, the 2024 candidate, is promoting far more protectionist policies than Trump the 2016 or 2020 candidate. Much of this is being encouraged by his vice presidential pick, Senator JD Vance, who is on record as saying he is open to tax hikes in the form of tariffs – and has no doubt been one of the architects of Trump’s plan to impose 10pc import tariffs on goods coming into the US.
Were Trump to actually push ahead with massive tariffs, he could kiss some of that positive polling goodbye, as the spike in costs for American consumers would risk cancelling out any of the other positive economic changes he made at the federal level.
It’s possible that Trump has clocked this – and doesn’t want to talk about (or further commit) to such tax hikes in the weeks leading up to polling day.
It’s also possible he wants to avoid the trap Labour has fallen into these past few months: having talked down the economy so openly during the election and the weeks that followed, they have dampened consumer confidence as people come to fear the UK economy is in a far more precarious position than is actually the case.
Were Trump to win, he wants to kickstart economic confidence from day one – and he’ll want the Federal Reserve to follow suit. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his big promise on the economy was that he was “gonna get interest rates way down” – a decision, of course, that is not actually in the president’s control.
“When I was president,” he told a first-time voter, there was “2.2pc interest and money was all over the place. Now you can’t get the money”.
There is no hint from Trump that this may have indeed been part of the problem: since inflation spiked on Biden’s watch, it’s his to own politically, and Trump’s to exploit.
Of course when it comes to the former president, the simple answer is often the right one: he says and does what he wants. And in the days ahead of Nov 5, Trump wants to talk about immigration, with a few Harris insults thrown in.
But by making the economy a secondary issue, you can’t help but feel Trump is missing a trick.
Kate Andrews is economics editor at The Spectator