Harris campaign hits Trump over economy in new ad

A new ad from Vice President Harris’s campaign works to draw a stark contrast with former President Trump on the economy as part of a massive post-Labor Day advertising blitz.

“We all know costs are too high. But while corporations are gouging families, Trump is focused on giving them tax cuts. But Kamala Harris is focused on you,” a narrator says in the ad, which launched Tuesday. 

The 30-second spot, titled “Focused,” is the campaign’s fourth economic ad since the Democratic National Convention late last month. It’s part of the campaign’s “aggressive efforts” to reach voters and sound alarms about Project 2025, a 900-page hard-right policy blueprint for the next GOP administration, on the other side of the aisle. 

“This election, the choice comes down to a simple question: Which candidate is focused on the American people?” Harris-Walz national spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak said in a release. 

Harris “knows costs are still too high for Americans and has a plan to bring them down,” Lutvak said, while Trump “either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care.”

The new ad is part of the Harris-Walz campaign’s staggering $370 million digital and TV ad reservations, set to run from Labor Day to Election Day, building on the campaign’s $90 million media blitz for the last few weeks of August. The ads are aimed at battleground voters and will highlight Harris’s personal story and contrast her agenda with Trump’s policies. 

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found Harris gaining ground on Trump on the economy. While 43 percent of registered voters backed the former president’s plan for employment and the economy, Harris was just a few points behind, at 40 percent. A July iteration of the survey had Trump up 11 points.

Harris unveiled her economic agenda last month, including proposals to cut taxes, boost housing construction and place a federal ban on grocery price gouging. Trump’s proposals include extending provisions to his 2017 tax law, doing away with taxes on Social Security benefits and reducing the corporate income tax rate.

Along the campaign trail, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), have been working to appeal to middle-class voters, touting Harris’s upbringing as the daughter of a working mom, and highlighting her work at McDonald’s while she got her college degree. 

In her highly anticipated first sit-down interview since launching her 2024 campaign, Harris said her day 1 priority would be strengthening the middle class. 

“Do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” Harris said about what she’d do on the first day of a potential presidential term. “When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think people are looking for a new way forward.”

Pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on why Harris, as vice president, hasn’t been able to take those steps already, Harris cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a hurdle to the Biden administration. 

“First of all, we had to recover as an economy. And we have done that,” Harris said.