With under a month to go until the 2024 Presidential election, former President Donald Trump is in a statistical near-tie with Vice-President Kamala Harris in almost every poll. If Trump is elected this fall, he will represent radical changes in policy from the Joe Biden administration.
Ernie Tedeschi served as the Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and Senior Adviser to President Joe Biden between 2021 and 2023. “I think Trump’s policies are an oil-and-vinegar mix of traditional conservatism and this populism that is actually a real break from historical Republican politics,” he said in an interview with The Urban Legend.
Trump’s conservative attitude applies to his immigration policies. When it comes to undocumented immigrants, the president can deport them without approval from Congress, a power Trump promises to exercise. “We’re going to have the largest deportation. We have no choice,” Trump said at a June 18 campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin.
“Trump talks [about deportation] without a lot of detail,” said UC Berkeley Law Professor Kate Jastram in an interview with The Urban Legend. “He hasn’t addressed what the categories of people he wants to deport are, or how he would go about deporting them.”
Because Trump does not specify who he wants to deport, it is hard to determine the likelihood for Trump to go through with his promise.
“There are people [in the United States] who are completely undocumented. Legally speaking, someone in that category would have to be apprehended [by the government], but then they would have certain due process rights,” Jastram said. “Deporting that many people is both legally and logistically a massive problem. … [And] if it actually happened, [it] would be very unpopular.”
One of Trump’s signature economic policies during his presidential campaign includes his proposal to allow workers to not pay federal income taxes on earned tips. Another policy extends and expands on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed into law as president. The act increased the standard deduction for individuals, decreased tax rates for wealthy taxpayers and significantly reduced corporate tax rates.
“The promises of extended and possibly even lower corporate rates is something that the business sector likes about the Trump platform,” Tedeschi said. “As well as the no-tax-on-tips, which I think is a really inefficient, business-friendly way of helping working folks.”
Trump also argued for higher tariffs on imported goods during his presidency, which large corporations historically oppose. Trump — along with his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio — said that the tariffs are necessary to protect American businesses.
The Trump campaign proposes a 60% tariff on goods from China and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports. He threatens to install higher tariffs on companies that move jobs outside the U.S.
While tariffs historically support their countries’ businesses, they often result in inflationary pressures. If implemented, Trump’s tariff plan could almost double U.S. inflation, according to an analysis by Nobel Prize Winner and Political Commentator Paul Krugman. This inflation risk contributes to some businesses’ opposition to the proposed tariffs.
Trump also advocates for limiting the independence of the Federal Reserve, the U.S.’ central banking system that fights inflation and sets interest rates. “Every advanced economy, every democracy in the world adopted a politically independent central bank, and that’s because decisions that fight inflation tend to be pretty politically unpopular,” said Tedeschi. Additionally, Tedeschi argued that Trump might hesitate to raise interest rates in an election year if he takes office.
Trump affirmed in multiple speeches that he does not believe climate change is caused by human activity. He is unlikely to commit to large-scale decarbonization, which would be a break with current American policy from the Biden administration.
“In his first term, Trump actually did have a climate policy,” said Columbia Law Professor Camille Pannu, who studies environmental regulation, in an interview with The Urban Legend. “It was just a policy of getting rid of as many regulations as possible, of making it as easy to produce carbon emissions in America as possible.”
In 2022, the Biden administration committed billions of dollars to fight climate change using the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and provisions in the Building Chips in America Act and Science Act. If elected, Trump said he will cut this pipeline of money.
“[The IRA] actually sets us back, as opposed to [moving] us forward. And [I will] rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump said on Sept. 5, 2024 before the Economic Club of New York.
During the Trump administration, he named three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade in the majority on June 24, 2022. At the time, the Supreme Court held by a six to three judgment that a constitutionally protected right to abortion does not exist. Since then, numerous states debated, and in some cases passed, wide-ranging abortion bans.
Trump’s political position on abortion is unclear. Most recently, he sparked controversy about his position on an amendment to protect abortion in his home state of Florida. Trump initially supported the measure, but after heavy pressure from Evangelical Christian groups and right-wing activists, he changed his position and said that he opposed it.
“Despite all the flip-flopping, I think it is highly likely that between Congress and the agencies in a Trump administration, there would be increasing limitations on the availability of abortion and perhaps in-vitro fertilization,” said Stanford Law Professor Henry Greely in an interview with The Urban Legend. “Under [Trump’s] administration, there will be pressure [from the right] on all that, and that administration would not be inclined to resist that the way a Democratic administration would be.”