By Thomas Weber 
Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Photo
By: Thomas Weber
Donald Trump participates in an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News, in front of an audience at the Economic Club of Chicago.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are racing toward what polls predict to be a razor thin finish in the presidential campaign. Trump and Harris have both participated in high profile events, responding to challenging questions about various policies. For Donald Trump, one such event was a recent interview in Chicago with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on October 15, which focused heavily on the former president’s economic vision. On October 10, Harris spoke to Latino voters at a town hall, which was hosted in Las Vegas by Univision.
In Chicago, Micklethwait questioned Trump about his proposals to raise tariffs on foreign imports, a proposal that Harris has equated to a “national sales tax.” Trump presented an argument that higher tariffs raise the likelihood of companies moving manufacturing to the United States, introducing jobs and lowering prices. To ensure that companies relocate to the United States quickly, Trump suggested that only “high,” “horrible,” and “obnoxious” tariffs as high as 50% could achieve such a goal.
Critics of Trump’s tariff plan believe that American consumers, not foreign companies, will bear the cost of higher import taxes. Harris insists that the price tag of the policy will cost $4,000 a year for American households, but the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates the cost of the plan to be closer to $2,600 each year. Trump counters this criticism by claiming that any expenses from tariffs will help to fund a variety of tax cuts, namely to social security, tipped income, overtime pay, and domestic manufacturers’ income. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that over ten years, Trump’s tariff plan will raise $2.7 trillion, while his proposed tax cuts will cost over $9 trillion. Overall, the Committee found that Trump’s campaign proposals will add $7.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, but it also found that Harris’ proposals could add $3.5 trillion to the deficit.
In addition to the tariff discussion, Micklethwait asked Trump about immigration policy and the January 6, 2021 conflict in the U.S. Capitol.
On immigration, Micklethwait asked Trump about whether mass deportations of “eleven million people” could damage the United States’ workforce. To defend his calls for mass deportation, Trump claimed that 13,099 “murderers” were “released” during the Biden Administration. That number comes from a letter sent by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Republican Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas, who represents a border congressional district. A table within the letter shows that 13,099 noncitizens convicted of homicide are included on the ICE “non-detained docket.” While Trump has characterized this number as evidence that the Biden Administration is responsible for an unchecked surge of criminal activity by illegal aliens, the statistics are more complicated. The non-detained docket includes immigrants that are currently under surveillance by ICE, but are not being held specifically in immigration detention. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Luis Miranda, the non-detained docket “includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more,” and those convicted of crimes may be “currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Invoking January 6, Micklethwait asked Trump to commit to a peaceful transition of power after this election, suggesting that American democracy looked “unruly” and “violent” on the day of the 2021 incident. Trump reminded Micklethwait that he used the words “peacefully and patriotically” when addressing his supporters on January 6, and he further insisted that the “primary scene in Washington” on that day was “love and peace.” Trump also claimed that “not one of those people” that went to the Capitol building “had a gun” and that “nobody was killed except for Ashli Babbitt,” one of his supporters. While an FBI Counterterrorism Division official stated in a 2021 U.S. Senate hearing that the FBI had “not recovered any” firearms from January 6 arrests, multiple people that were charged for violent offenses, civil disorder, or property destruction were also charged with possessing weapons. And, while no police officers were killed on the scene of January 6, Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes, suffering two strokes eight hours after being exposed to a chemical irritant. Furthermore, two officers that were on duty at the Capitol on January 6 committed suicide in the weeks after the event.
In her Univision town hall, Harris responded to voters’ questions about a variety of issues, including abortion and border security. One voter, from Yuma, Arizona, attested to “fear” in his community and exhaustion among local border patrol agents due to “waves of immigrants” crossing the southern border, and asked how Harris would approach the issue differently than President Biden. Harris did not identify any Biden policies, but rather pointed to her collaborative efforts to prosecute “transnational criminal organizations” as California’s Attorney General. Furthermore, Harris criticized Trump for rallying Republicans against a bipartisan border security bill in May.
The bipartisan bill that Harris supports would have raised funding for border patrol and physical barriers, limited asylum opportunities, and sped up deportation processes when illegal border crossings reach a 5,000 daily average. But, many Republicans questioned whether the 5,000 illegal crossings threshold is necessary to activate stricter deportation enforcement, and some Democrats worried that the bill would not address the needs of DACA recipients.
On abortion, a voter from Beloit, Wisconsin asked Harris how she would “make sure abortion is regularized.” Harris blamed Trump for nominating three of the Supreme Court justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, leading to “Trump abortion bans” in “at least twenty states.” Only thirteen states have total or near total bans on abortion, but seven others have limits ranging from six weeks to eighteen weeks. Rather than endorse bans on abortion, Trump has generally supported a state-level approach to abortion, and has made clear that he would veto a federal abortion ban if it were brought to his desk.
Harris also raised a concern about accessibility for in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, claiming that it is now “more difficult” to receive treatments. While IVF providers are currently allowed to operate in all fifty states, some conservative legislators have introduced legislation that would give embryos created through IVF the same rights as a person. None of those introduced bills have passed, and Trump has insisted that he supports availability of IVF treatments.
These snapshots of Trump and Harris’ pitches to voters come during a heated phase of the 2024 campaign. POLITICO has reported a “vibe shift” in Trump’s favor among the “political class,” but forecasts like FiveThirtyEight and JHK still show a highly competitive toss up race.