US economy 'remarkable' ahead of election, Trump's tariff proposal a 'real risk to the whole world'

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00:00Thanks for joining us. I am Erin Ogunkeye. Well, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will

00:09hold rivaling rallies then in the swing state of Wisconsin this Friday. The Republican candidate

00:14will campaign in downtown Milwaukee, which is actually home to the state's most Democratic

00:20votes, while Kamala Harris will look to convince voters in a Milwaukee suburb. Now, polls suggest

00:26that the race for the state's 10 electoral college votes is razor thin, and that is not

00:32insignificant in a state where four of the past six presidential elections have been

00:37decided by less than a percentage point. Well, on Thursday, the candidates then delivered

00:45their closing arguments in the swing states of the Southwest. That's Arizona and Nevada.

00:50While Trump is hoping that dissatisfaction with Biden's immigration policy will tip the

00:54region in his favor, Kamala Harris honed in on her rivals' comments about women. Here's

00:59our regional correspondent, Wasim Kornei, with a roundup of Thursday's campaigning.

01:05A busy day for both of the main presidential candidates in the Western states this Thursday.

01:10Kamala Harris speaking to a crowd of 20,000 people in Phoenix, her opening out Los Tigres

01:14del Norte, a band of Mexican music, stars of Mexican music. And that was not a coincidence.

01:19This was a last ditch effort to try to get out the Latino vote in this state ahead of

01:24the election. Kamala Harris warning the crowd, telling them that Trump insults Latinos and

01:30that he scapegoats immigrants. There is still a large portion of the Latino vote here in

01:35this state that is still up for grabs. Twenty-nine percent of Latino voters in Arizona have yet

01:39to make up their mind, according to a recent poll. It was much of the same Northwest of

01:45here in the state of Nevada. Kamala Harris also speaking at a rally there. She was preceded

01:50by Mexican band Mana and singer Jennifer Lopez, who is from Puerto Rico. And that,

01:54of course, that place was also very much in the headlines these past few days after a

01:59comedian at Donald Trump's rally in New York on Sunday called it a floating island of garbage

02:04in the ocean. Speaking of Donald Trump, he had a very similar schedule this Thursday,

02:09trekking across three Western states, starting the day off in New Mexico, then holding a

02:13rally in Henderson, Nevada, before closing off the day in Arizona, taking part in a hurricane

02:18relief benefit event with alt-right conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. But for both of

02:24those main candidates, it was their final stops in the Western states before the election

02:28on Tuesday. Well, it was a popular campaign slogan coined by Bill Clinton's then senior

02:35aide James Carville, the economy stupid. Well, that now famous phrase meant to remind strategic

02:41strategists just how important economic matters are to voters. That was in 1992. But now over

02:47three decades on, is it still true? If you ask American voters themselves, very much so.

02:52According to Pew Research Center, eight in 10 Americans say that the economy is very important

02:58to their vote in the 2024 election. Well, that theoretically should give the Democrats an

03:03advantage. Despite bleak forecasts, the U.S. economy continued solid growth in the third

03:09corner. Inflation is finally back to pre-pandemic levels, though jobs did slow in October,

03:16according to data released just moments ago, the U.S. economy adding just 12,000 of them.

03:21Well, for more on all of this, Conor O'Kane, senior lecturer in economics at Pornmyth University,

03:26joins us on the program. Thank you for joining us, sir. So can you tell us more about this

03:32latest jobs data? How much of a difference do you think it'll make? I think at this stage,

03:37the jobs data is unlikely to make much of a difference. I think 60 million Americans have

03:44already voted. Yes, the job figures weren't as good this month, maybe as Democrats might have

03:50hoped. But there are reasons for that. We've had a couple of hurricanes. We've had strikes at the

03:55Boeing factory. So there are factors. I think, you know, one of the things that Joe Biden has been

04:01has been very much emphasizing is that unemployment is still at a 50 to 60 year historic low in the

04:08U.S. So at this stage, I'm not sure slightly underperforming recent figures are going to be

04:16a big factor. So most agree otherwise that the U.S. economy is in good shape. Why do you think

04:23that that's not translating into stronger support for the Democrats? I think it's partially due to

04:31the success of the Republican campaign. The Republicans have managed to focus the economy

04:37discussion on the cost of living. And really, if we look at the pledges, the economic pledges that

04:43each candidate is offering, they're very, very much focused on the cost of living.

04:49So how much of what any president does on the economy do you think is seen during a four year

04:55administration, especially because a lot of Joe Biden's economic program involves some long term

05:00investments, things like clean energy, bringing different industries back to the U.S., strengthening

05:05organized labor. How easy is it to see whether or not those bets paid off in just such a short

05:12period of time? What he has by economics really has been, you know, I agree lots of these investments

05:18often take decades, but actually the U.S. has had some quite quick hits his chip program. So one of

05:24the things that happened during the pandemic was that especially in the field of semiconductors,

05:29the U.S. was quite exposed because when Taiwan and China went down into lockdown,

05:35American manufacturers were left short of semiconductors. And actually, the chips program

05:41has already yielding results. America has now much moved much, much closer to kind of

05:47self-sufficiency in the area of semiconductors. So. There are long term gains to come, but they've

05:53also had some quick short term hits as well. So more broadly, what do we mean when we talk about

06:00just the economy from an electoral perspective? Are we talking about GDP, unemployment, inflation,

06:06taxes? Is it perhaps too big a term to try to analyze voter trends with? Well, America is,

06:13you know, there was a piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that, you know, the headline

06:17was the next president inherits a remarkable economy. Normally, you know, the incumbent can

06:25be attacked on some sort of fundamental, you know, growth might be good, but jobs might be good, etc.,

06:30etc. But America is in an unusual position at the moment where really all of the core fundamentals

06:37on the economy are very, very strong. So economy is also a question of perception. To what extent

06:43do you think things can be going poorly for a subset individuals, even though they appear to be

06:49the overall economy rather appears to be doing well and vice versa? Well, you know, America,

06:55so it's got inflation down under control down to back to close to target 2.1 percent. But just like

07:00the rest of the world, it has suffered an inflationary spike. And that has come through

07:05in the form of increases in energy prices and increases in food prices and increases in things

07:13like auto insurance. And we see each of the candidates focusing specifically on that. Donald

07:19Trump says he's going to organize a committee that will reduce auto insurance and energy prices by 50

07:25percent. Difficult to see how he's actually going to achieve that. But that's what he says.

07:30On the other hand, Harris is saying she's going to get the Federal Trade Commission to investigate

07:35what she sees as dominant markets in some of the food industry. So she wants to break up

07:41things like the meat industry. And she believes that will lower prices.

07:46So I guess to sum things up, who do you think stands to gain the most from

07:50Donald Trump presidency and from Kamala Harris presidency?

07:55I think the Donald Trump presidency, if you look at some of the things that he's talking about,

07:59like introducing a 20 percent tariff on all imports in the US and 60 percent on

08:06Chinese imports, I think that that's a real risk to the whole world, because if that was to happen,

08:13that would end really since 1944, since Bretton Woods Agreement. We've really had a period of

08:20a focus on free trade. And for the US to unilaterally apply 20 percent tariffs on all

08:27imports would be a real risk for the rest of the world, I would say.

08:33Conor O'Kane, senior lecturer in economics at Bournemouth University,

08:36thank you very much for coming on the show today.

08:38Thank you very much.

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