Study: 800K Job Losses With Harris Economic Plan

Former President Donald Trump has been warning about how devastating Vice President Kamala Harris' economic plan would be for Americans, saying earlier this month that if Harris wins in November, the U.S. will be headed toward another Great Depression.

The message appears to be resonating with workers as internal polling from the Teamsters union reportedly showed that a majority of members favor Trump over his Democrat rival. And for the first time in nearly three decades, the union declined to endorse a candidate for president.

A study last week from the non-partisan Tax Foundation appears to back up Trump's concerns about Harris' economic vision. The study showed her economic plan would increase taxes by $4.1 trillion from 2025 to 2034 and lead to the loss of nearly 800,000 jobs.

Harris' plan includes increasing the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28% and hike the top individual income tax rate to 39.6% on income above $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for joint filers. She also wants to tax long-term capital gains and qualified dividends at 28% for taxable income above $1 million, as well as creating a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains of high-net-worth taxpayers.

As far as tax relief, she has proposed increasing the child tax credit for newborns to $6,000 and providing a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers over four years.

The Tax Foundation said Harris' plans would raise about $1.7 trillion in revenue over 10 years on a conventional basis, and after factoring in reduced revenue from slower economic growth, the net revenue increase would be just $642 billion. The foundation estimated the proposed tax changes would reduce long-run gross domestic product (GDP) by 2%, wages by 1.2%, and employment by about 786,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

"We find the tax policies would raise top tax rates on corporate and individual income to among the highest in the developed world, slowing economic growth and reducing competitiveness," the study stated. "The tax credits and other carve-outs would complicate the tax code, run more spending through the IRS, and, together with various price controls, fail to improve affordability challenges in housing and other sectors."

At least 177,000 jobs would be lost by raising the net investment income tax rate from 3.8% to 5% and shifting the Medicare tax rate up to the same percentage, the study showed. Another 131,000 jobs would be lost under the expansion of the earned income tax credit, a provision in the 2021 American Rescue Plan — for which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote — as well as her campaign pledge to expand the child tax credit.

Harris' plan to hike the corporate tax rate to 28% would cost 125,000 jobs, and the tax hike on individuals with incomes above $400,000 would cause 86,000 more jobs to be lost.

Among various ideas, Trump reportedly is seeking to extend the expiring 2017 tax cuts Congress passed during his administration, further reduce the corporate income tax rate, exempt tips and Social Security benefits from taxes, impose a 10% or higher universal baseline tariff on all imports, and raise current tariffs on China to at least 60%.

The group's study on Trump's economic plan, which it said is harder to gauge given his reversal on some policies, is projected to increase wages by 0.6%, reduce long-run GDP by 0.2%, and lose about 387,000 jobs.

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