What’s at stake in the presidential election: Trump and Harris on the issues
WASHINGTON – In many ways, the race for the White House between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris presents a clear choice for voters. But in an extraordinary campaign that has seen a last-minute candidate swap by Democrats and two failed assassination attempts against the Republican, policy differences have often been overshadowed by events.
The candidates have largely avoided making specific policy promises as they stitch together new coalitions amid a political realignment that has seen Republicans like former Rep. Liz Cheney back Harris while Democratic scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has endorsed Trump. Both the Republican and Democratic conventions focused more on aesthetics than articulating detailed platforms.
Much of what the federal government does depends on which party controls the House and Senate, and both chambers are within reach for either party. Still, Trump and Harris offer Americans starkly different paths on numerous issues. Here’s where the candidates stand on a few of them.
Immigration and border security
Congress has tried and failed for decades to update U.S. immigration laws – most recently in February when Trump killed a bipartisan proposal Republicans had previously supported. As a result, decisions on border and asylum policy have been left to the president and the courts.
About 11 million immigrants live in the United States without authorization, including an estimated 246,000 in Washington state and 29,000 in Idaho, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Others live in the country lawfully with temporary legal status granted by a president, including the Haitian immigrants in an Ohio town at the center of false rumors Trump and his running mate from that state, Sen. JD Vance, have spread in recent weeks.
Current laws allow migrants to enter the country and request asylum. That begins a legal process that takes an average of nearly four years until a court hearing, with asylum granted in just 14% of cases in 2022, according to federal data. Because guest-worker programs haven’t kept pace with demand for labor, the U.S. economy has increasingly relied on migrant workers who don’t have legal status.
Since Trump announced his first successful campaign for president in 2015, one of the few consistent tenets of his platform has been the idea that immigrants hurt U.S. citizens, whether through crime – although research has shown U.S. citizens commit crimes at a higher rate than immigrants – and their economic impact.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump has promised “mass deportations” if he is re-elected, but he hasn’t made clear how he plans to do so or addressed the fact that much of the U.S. economy, especially the agriculture and construction sectors, relies on those people. He also wants to build more fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, a project that the Biden administration halted.
Meanwhile, Harris has taken a tougher stance on immigration and border security than many of her Democratic predecessors, embracing a bipartisan proposal spearheaded by GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma. That bill, which other Republicans blocked at Trump’s behest, would have let a president halt asylum processing until border crossings fell dramatically, while allowing more legal immigration.
The economy, trade and cost of living
Since yearly inflation driven by the coronavirus pandemic peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, it has fallen to 2.5% in the most recent Consumer Price Index report, but Americans’ average wages still haven’t caught up to inflation, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta analysis. Both candidates say they want to lower the cost of living for Americans, and each of their plans revolves around what to do when many of the tax cuts Congress enacted under Trump expire at the end of 2025.
Harris says she would build an “opportunity economy” by lowering taxes on small businesses and people who make less than $400,000 a year, while letting Trump-era tax cuts for the biggest companies and richest Americans expire. Trump says he wants to extend the expiring tax cuts indefinitely, while promising additional tax breaks, including for tips and Social Security income.
Cutting taxes, while popular with voters, also means increasing the federal deficit. Neither candidate has embraced measures that could substantially reduce the deficit, such as reforming Social Security and other entitlement programs.
The U.S. national debt has surpassed $35.6 trillion, after Trump approved an additional $8.4 trillion in debt and President Joe Biden approved another $4.3 trillion, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimates that Harris’ campaign proposals would increase the federal deficit by between $1.2 and $2 trillion over a decade, while Trump’s proposals would add $4.1 to $5.8 trillion to the deficit over that period.
Trump says he would raise revenue by imposing tariffs on imports, as he did in his first term, up to 60% on goods from China and 10% to 20% from other countries. Tariffs can help domestic businesses compete with cheaper foreign goods, and the Harris campaign has said she would use “targeted” tariffs to support U.S. jobs, but they can also provoke retaliatory tariffs from other countries and start a trade war.
A trade war during the Trump administration had major effects on Northwest agriculture, especially wheat growers, who received a federal bailout in 2019. In a paper published Sept. 11, researchers at North Dakota State University estimated that Trump’s proposed tariffs could cause a decline of up to 40% in U.S. wheat exports.
Energy and climate change
During the Democratic primary in 2019, Harris said she would ban fracking, a form of oil and gas drilling. But in 2024, she has reversed that position and points out that the U.S. crude oil production hit a record high during the Biden administration and the country produces more natural gas than it did under Trump.
In her debate with Trump in September, Harris said she wants to “invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” but she promises to continue the Biden administration’s efforts to transition the U.S. economy to lower-carbon energy and transportation with the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030.
Trump, on the other hand, has called climate change “a hoax” and said he would repeal tax credits that have spurred the manufacturing of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. He promises to undo Biden administration rules that he says have restricted U.S. energy production, referring to restrictions on vehicle emissions, methane leaks and coal-burning power plants.
Foreign policy
Recent years have seen simmering conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East and elsewhere erupt into crises the next president will have to confront.
As president, Trump’s “America First” approach saw him pull away from traditional alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while being unusually open to longtime adversaries like North Korea. He pulled out of an international pact that restricted Iran’s nuclear program and struck a deal with the Taliban in 2020 that accelerated the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden a year later.
Harris has presented herself as the guarantor of America’s alliances, pledging continued support to Ukraine in the war that began when Russia seized Crimea in 2014, then launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. Trump has said he would end that war “in 24 hours” by forcing Ukraine and Russia to negotiate, but he hasn’t said how he would do that.
In the year since Hamas killed some 1,200 people in Israel – beginning a war in which Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and Iran has fired missiles at Israel in response to Israeli attacks on Iranian proxies in the region – Harris has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and a two-state solution, even as traditional U.S. policy goal seems increasingly fanciful.
Trump, whose administration further isolated Palestinians by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and pushing diplomatic efforts to strengthen ties between Israel and some Arab states, has largely avoided commenting on the conflict except to stoke tensions inside the Democratic Party over the U.S. role in it. But he told the newspaper Israel Hayom in March, “You have to finish up your war” because Israel is “losing a lot of support” around the world over the devastation in Gaza.
The former president wants to emulate Israel in one way, however, by replicating its “Iron Dome” missile defense system. National security analyst Joe Cirincione has estimated such a system would cost the nation roughly $2.5 trillion. Critics point out that it would also be virtually useless, because the United States already has a missile defense system and the Israeli system is designed to intercept short-range rockets and mortars, which neither Mexico nor Canada are firing at Americans.