Harris, Trump Offer Radically Different Visions for Manufacturing — and How Government Can Help in 2025 (Video)

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both poised to run for manufacturing, but this week they painted starkly different pictures of the state of the industry while promising help in nearly opposite ways.

Vice President Harris will deliver a speech Wednesday to the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, where a senior Harris campaign official said she will outline the third plank of her “opportunity economy” agenda, focusing on boosting new manufacturing.

The plans she will discuss are expected to rely heavily on using government incentives to boost the manufacturing sector. In an afternoon speech, she promised new proposals that would identify sectors that would be prioritised for further manufacturing expansion if she wins the November election.

Harris is also expected to tout the surge in manufacturing activity in recent years under the Biden-Harris administration and present his plans as a way to continue that upward trend.

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A series of recent government actions, from bipartisan infrastructure legislation to new green energy incentives to the CHIPS Act and the Science Act focused on semiconductors, have helped drive more than a threefold increase in the number of new factories being built in the U.S. in recent years.

Former President Trump, by contrast, painted a darker picture of the state of manufacturing and offered a different approach in a speech Tuesday. In that speech, he focused on using new protective tariffs, alongside other measures like lower corporate taxes and less regulation, as a means of spurring factory construction.

“With the vision I’m laying out today, we will not only stop our businesses from going overseas, but under my leadership, we will take jobs from other countries,” Trump promised a crowd in Savannah, Georgia.

He also called the past few years a “horror show” for the manufacturing sector, but ignored the boom in industrial construction — a figure that has remained largely unchanged during his four years in office.

Instead, he focused on specific examples of the growing foreign presence of such well-known companies as GE (GE) and IBM (IBM), as well as the possible sale of US Steel (X) to Japanese company Nippon Steel.

But at least in the case of the proposed sale of U.S. Steel, company officials on both sides of the possible takeover have said they would not move any further steel production overseas if the deal is approved in the coming months.

President Biden has also voiced his opposition to the U.S. Steel deal and said his administration reportedly intends to block it, but it is unclear whether he will take action before the November election.

Harris’ Plan Based on Biden’s Policies

Underlying the focus on Harris and Trump this week is a recent trend on the campaign trail, in which Harris has gained significant support among voters on the broader economy since taking the Democratic helm from President Joe Biden this summer.

Harris and her campaign are hoping this week’s speech will continue a trend that has seen her earn a 46% approval rating on economic issues in a recent Morning Consult poll and lead in Financial Times polls in August and September.

Other polls show him trailing Trump on economic issues nationally and in key battleground states.

Read more: Trump vs. Harris: 4 Ways the Next President Could Impact Your Bank Accounts

Harris said the main focus of the speech will be to “really outline my vision for the economy.” It will also touch on her other recently announced plans — including one for small businesses and another on the cost of living.

Harris recently told reporters that she would address the care economy in her speech, where she has recently outlined priorities — such as limiting child care costs to 7% of working families’ incomes — but did not provide a detailed plan for how she plans to achieve that.

But most of the focus in this week’s speech is expected to be on manufacturing.

The speech will draw largely on her biography and her economic philosophy will be described as “pragmatic,” according to a senior Harris official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of her address, the text of which is still being finalized.

The speech is clearly aimed at reaching out to the business community and, the official added, will be a vision focused on “practical, realistic solutions.”

The question is whether that will help her win over millions of voters in key pro-manufacturing states, and the success of that message may depend on what vision of manufacturing voters believe.

Will Trump’s “horror show” idea resonate with voters? Can Harris convince them that this aspect of Biden’s largely unpopular economic agenda is something to embrace?

Manufacturing jobs surged under the Trump administration in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that economic disruption led to the loss of more than 1 million manufacturing jobs, according to government data.

Those jobs have returned, and more Americans now work in manufacturing than at any time since the end of the George W. Bush administration. But that’s still a far cry from the manufacturing boom of decades ago.

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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