US Presidential Debate Transcript on Tax and Tariffs

| Image: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the debate

Nothing compares to the words exchanged by the two U.S. Presidential candidates, Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, during the highly anticipated debate on September 10, 2024. The debate kicked off with an intense discussion on taxes and tariffs, setting the stage for the night’s economic discourse. Below is a transcript of their statements on these critical topics.

Moderator DAVID MUIR: So let's get started. I want to begin tonight with the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue, and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris, you and President Trump were elected four years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So, I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America. I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people. And that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy. Because here's the thing. We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children. And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time. So that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy a car seat, buy clothes for their children. My passion, one of them, is small businesses. I was actually -- my mother raised my sister and me but there was a woman who helped raise us. We call her our second mother. She was a small business owner. I love our small businesses. My plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses, knowing they are part of the backbone of America's economy. My opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5 trillion to America's deficit. My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month. Economists have said that Trump's sales tax would actually result for middle-class families in about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle-class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires.

DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I'll give you two minutes.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement. She knows that. We're doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we've done for the world. And the tariff will be substantial in some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China. In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money, they can't. It would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do. They've taken in billions of dollars from China and other places. They've left the tariffs on. When I had it, I had tariffs and yet I had no inflation. Look, we've had a terrible economy because inflation has -- which is really known as a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation's history. We were at 21%. But that's being generous because many things are 50, 60, 70, and 80% higher than they were just a few years ago. This has been a disaster for people, for the middle class, but for every class. On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon. And you see what's happening. You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast. I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. I'll do it again and even better.

DAVID MUIR: We are going to get to immigration and border security during this debate. But I would like to let Vice President Harris respond on the economy here.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I would love to. Let's talk about what Donald Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess. What we have done and what I intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations and the hopes of the American people. But I'm going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling. What you're going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again. I believe very strongly that the American people want a president who understands the importance of bringing us together knowing we have so much more in common than what separates us. And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.

DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I'll give you a minute here to respond.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Number one, I have nothing to do, as you know and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it, purposely. I'm not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do -- everybody knows I'm an open book. Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before. We had the greatest economy. We got hit with a pandemic. And the pandemic was, not since 1917 where 100 million people died has there been anything like it? We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic. We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. We made ventilators for the entire world. We got gowns. We got masks. We did things that nobody thought possible. And people give me credit for rebuilding the military. They give me credit for a lot of things. But not enough credit for the great job we did with the pandemic. But the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs. These were jobs, bounce back. And it bounced back and it went to their benefit. But I was the one that created them. They know it and so does everybody else.

DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So, Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it's all about tax breaks for the richest people. I am offering what I describe as an opportunity economy, and the best economists in our country, if not the world, have reviewed our relative plans for the future of America. What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a recession. You just have to look at where we are and where we stand on the issues. And I'd invite you to know that Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That's just a sound bite. They gave her that to say. Look, I went to the Wharton School of Finance and many of those professors, the top professors, think my plan is a brilliant plan, it's a great plan. It's a plan that's going to bring up our worth, our value as a country. It's going to make people want to be able to go and work and create jobs and create a lot of good, solid money for our -- for our country. And just to finish off, she doesn't have a plan. She copied Biden's plan. And it's like four sentences, like run-Spot-run. Four sentences that are just oh, we'll try and lower taxes. She doesn't have a plan. Take a look at her plan. She doesn't have a plan.

DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is a essentially a national sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said that you might double your plan, imposing tariffs up to 20% on good coming into this country. As you know many economists say that with tariffs at that level costs are then passed onto the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it'll mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing medication arguing it costs the typical family nearly four thousand dollars a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They aren't gonna have higher prices what's gonna have and who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries and you know if she doesn't like 'em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration. We are gonna take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. I had no inflation, virtually no inflation, they had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country because I've never seen a worse period of time. People can't go out and buy cereal bacon or eggs or anything else. These the people of our country are absolutely dying with what they've done. They've destroyed the economy and all you have to do it look at a poll. The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great that their economy was terrible.

DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris I do want to ask for your response and you heard what the president said there because the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place so how do you respond?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, let's be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars, you wanna talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century. Which means focusing on the details of what that requires, focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing in American based technology so that we win the race on A.I. and quantum computing, focusing on what we need to do to support America's workforce, so that we don't end up having the on the short end of the stick in terms of workers' rights. But what Donald Trump did let's talk about this with COVID, is he actually thanked President XI for what he did during COVID. Look at his tweet. "Thank you, President XI," exclamation point. When we know that XI was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.

DAVID MUIR: President Trump, I'll let you respond.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First of all, they bought their chips from Taiwan. We hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have. I don't say her because she has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She's going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She's gone to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she'd change it. And it will be the end of our country. She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. But when you look at what she's done to our country and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly where it's I believe 21 million people, not the 15 that people say, and I think it's a lot higher than the 21. That's bigger than New York state. Pouring in. And just look at what they're doing to our country. They're criminals. Many of these people coming in are criminals. And that's bad for our economy too. You mentioned before, we'll talk about immigration later.

Well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. They have and she has destroyed our country with policy that's insane. Almost policy that you'd say they have to hate our country.

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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I want to respond to that, though. I want to just respond briefly. Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country. One who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people. I believe in what we can do to strengthen our small businesses, which is why I have a plan. Let's talk about our plans. And, and let's compare the plans. I have a plan to give startup businesses $50,000 tax deduction, to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work. I have a plan. $6,000 for young families for the first year of your child's life. To help you in that most critical stage of your child's development. I have a plan that is about allowing people to be able to pursue what has been fleeting in terms of the American dream by offering help with down payment of $25,000, down payment assistance for first-time home buyers. That's the kind of conversation I believe, David, that people really want tonight as opposed to a conversation that is constantly about belittling and name-calling. Let's turn the page and move forward.

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• READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript - ABC News (go.com)