MSNBC's Morning Joe explains why economists overwhelmingly support Harris over Trump
23 Nobel Prize-winning economists recently endorsed Harris' economic agenda
Published
Citation From the October 24, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe
MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): Nobel Prize-winning economists are backing Vice President Kamala Harris' vision for the economy, calling it "vastly superior" to the plans laid out by former President Donald Trump. Twenty-three U.S. recipients of the prestigious award have signed a letter serving as a stamp of approval for Harris' economic agenda. According to the group, the vice president's agenda will improve the overall health of the economy, while Trump's policies will greatly increase tariffs, something he seems to be obsessed with. Joining us now from the southwest wall, former Treasury official and Morning Joe economic analyst, Steve Rattner. Steve, take us through this.
STEVE RATTNER (MORNING JOE ECONOMIC ANALYST): Yeah, Mika, well, you saw the Nobel Prize announcement by the economists. And it's indicative of what economists feel about it. So, let me show you one other survey of economists and then we'll get into the details of why economists feel as strongly as they do. So, The Wall Street Journal surveyed 39 economists. And what they found was this, a lot of support for many of Harris' key plans. Seventy-four support for her tax credit of $6,000 for new babies. Fifty-nine support for raising the corporate tax cut. Sixty-four percent for capping insulin prices at $35 for everyone. And 46%, roughly 50/50, for capping out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs. Less support for a couple other things. But basically, very strong support.
Contrast that over here with Donald Trump, who got 8% support from economists for making his tax cuts permanent. Exactly zero support for his tariffs of 20%. And 5% support for eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, and I'll come back to that in a second. So, dramatic contrast between support for Harris on the one side, no support, basically, for Trump on the other side. From 39 economists from across the board.
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RATTNER: So, why are these economists so opposed to Trump's plan? Because the economic effects would be pretty terrible. This is a study done by Bloomberg Economics, and they found that Harris' plan did not have much change in either the GDP or inflation, which in a sense is a good thing at this point. But look at what Trump's plan would do. Trump's plan would cut the GDP by 8.9%. Let me put that in perspective for you. This is roughly twice the amount that the GDP went down during the Financial Crisis.
WILLIE GEIST (CO-HOST): Wow.
RATTNER: So, we would be looking at something between a recession and a depression. And interestingly, as I'm sure you people know, because we've talked about this many times, the tariffs would cause certainly a part of this.
But the biggest cause, actually, of this drop are the mass deportations that Trump is talking about. Because he would take huge pieces of our labor force out of the country, send them back to or send them somewhere else, and the result would be business wouldn't have labor. They wouldn't be able to produce things. And you'd have this enormous economic contraction. So, this is something we've never seen before in terms of scoring a set of policy proposals from a presidential candidate.
The other reason why Trump — why Harris seems to be doing better or may be doing better for her economic thoughts relative to Trump, is maybe people are figuring out what's actually in these two plans. And one of the most important things in these two plans are the differences in their tax proposals. Harris' tax proposal would raise incomes for people at the bottom 20%, for people in the 20% to 40% percentile, by fairly significant amounts. She would raise taxes for people at the higher incomes down here, in the 99 to 100 and the 95 to 99. Trump does the opposite. Does the opposite. He raises after-tax incomes for people at the highest incomes, up here, and believe it or not, if you're at the bottom, Trump's tax plan would actually increase your taxes slightly.
So, maybe people are figuring out these kinds of differences and changing their view of her economic plan versus Trump’s economic plan.