Vice President Harris has so far aligned closely to Democratic values and Biden’s stance, with some disparity between their views.

Immigration

The Democratic Party has long supported a more open immigration policy. The Biden-Harris administration has emphasized adding more agents and human support at borders in order to reduce illegal crossings and expand the legal immigration process. According to the Democratic platform, an additional 24,000 agents were allocated to the Southwest border during the last presidential term, and there was a 40 percent decrease in illegal border crossings since Biden’s executive order limiting asylum in June.

In September’s presidential debate, Vice President Harris affirmed her support of the Border Act of 2024, which would tighten border security by adding 1,500 border agents. The bill was not passed, due to being blocked in Senate, which Harris attributed to Trump’s influence. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, she will likely continue efforts to prioritize improvement of the legal immigration system alongside containment of illegal crossings.

Economy

Vice President Harris has aided small businesses and pushed to lower taxes for the middle class. According to the Democratic platform, the Biden-Harris administration oversaw the passing of the American Rescue Plan in the wake of COVID-19, which helped six million small businesses pay taxes and expanded the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit for those in poverty. Harris’s campaign website states that she has especially driven support efforts for businesses owned by minorities, tripling Small Business Administration lending to black-owned businesses and doubling small-dollar lending to businesses owned by women and Latinx.

Harris has continued these positions on taxing and small business support, saying in the Sept. 10 debate that she plans to extend tax cuts for young families and give a $50,000 tax deduction for small, starting businesses. Her website also states her intention that no one with an income of under $400,000 per year will have taxes raised.

Fracking

The aim of the Democratic Party, according to the party platform, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030. In the past, Harris has opposed fracking; however, she since reversed her former stance. In the recent presidential debate, she said that the reason for her support of fracking was her recognition of the importance of maintaining and creating the US’s own oil sources, to decrease the reliance on foreign oil.

The Democratic stance has historically been one that advocates strongly for clean energy sources, and fights to mitigate the effects of climate change. According to Vice President Harris’s website platform, she cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowered energy costs for households and created bonuses for clean energy projects in low-income communities.

Since 2016, former President Trump’s administration has made his stances clear on issues such as the economy and the environment by enacting policies like deregulation.

According to Politico, Trump has transformed the GOP’s policies. For instance, from 1984 to 2016, every GOP platform called for a national abortion ban. However, Trump has declared that if reelected in 2024, he will leave the issue of abortion up to individual states. Similarly, the GOP’s 2024 platform states that Republicans will protect the issue of life from within their states.

Immigration

According to ABC News, in February 2024, Trump urged the Republican Party to oppose a bipartisan border bill that would have cracked down on illegal immigration by adding hundreds of border patrol and ICE agents, funded construction of a new border wall, and closed the border when illegal crossings rose. He openly admitted that the upcoming election was the reason for his position. Though he supports all the actions of the bill, he benefits greatly from an extended border crisis as it makes immigration a larger issue in the election, which could help Trump gain votes from undecided voters. According to Trump’s campaign website, if reelected he will seal the border and stop the migrant invasion. “I will send in federal law enforcement to rescue every town that has been taken over by migrant aliens and criminal alien thugs,” Trump said at a campaign event in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. “We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

Another part of Trump’s immigration stance is his promise to build a border wall. According to BBC News, 654 miles of the 1933 miles along the southern border with Mexico have some kind of barrier along them. The Trump administration claimed to have built an additional 400 miles of border wall. Only 80 miles of this was built where there were no barriers before. According to NPR, a full border wall will cost over $11 billion and over $20 million a mile, making it the most expensive wall in the world.

Economy

According to the Trump White House Archives, Trump believes the best way to stimulate economic growth is through tax cuts. During his presidency, the Job Cuts and Tax Acts reduced income taxes for each tax bracket. Most notably, he lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Small businesses also received a 20 percent reduction on income tax and the Child Tax Credit doubled, supporting Americans with children.

Trump has promised to further lower corporate taxes from 21 percent to 15 percent, to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay, and social security benefits. Furthermore, Trump has declared that he will make America affordable again by lowering prices on everyday goods such as gas and groceries. This promises targets those in lower- and middle-income classes who suffered under the inflation crisis of the Biden Administration.

“On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign an executive order directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down,” he said during a rally in Asheville, North Carolina.

Fracking

Former President Trump’s administration reversed 98 environmental rules and regulations and attempted to roll back an additional 14 during his presidency. According to the New York Times, 19 of these were related to extraction and drilling, and the 37th rescinded water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Native lands.

Part of Trump’s 2024 campaign is his promise to make the U.S. the dominant energy producer in the world. According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, the U.S has produced more crude oil per year than any other country in history since 2018. Advances in fracking technology have increased production from new wells.

As America stands at a pivotal crossroad, the starkly contrasting visions of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will impact the nation’s future, with each presenting bold ideas and distinct policies that reflect their unique approaches to governance.

Immigration:

Immigration is one of the key issues in the upcoming election, with both campaigns possessing distinctly different views. For Former President Trump, immigration was one of the key issues that propelled him to win the 2016 election, something he hopes will happen again this time around. During many of his public appearances, he has portrayed the immigration system as disorderly and advocates for the mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.

However, SMU Professor Cal Jillson points out that these large deportations would present logistical and economic challenges to the U.S. economy and likely be unattainable.

“There is simply no way logistically to round up millions of people and usher them across the border,” Jillson said. “If you did that, it would have a dramatically negative affect on the U.S economy because most of those people are workers and pay taxes.”

In contrast, Vice President Harris focuses on border security rather than border closure. Harris emphasizes the importance of providing pathways to legalized immigration instead of mass deportations. She announced that she intends to extend restrictions on asylum access while working to make the legal immigration process simpler.

Regarding the border wall, Harris’s policies include filling in strategic sections of the wall while preserving humanitarian protections. Conversely, Trump promises to complete the border wall to keep immigrants from illegally entering the United States, arguing that it will keep American citizens safe from the dangers that undocumented immigrants may bring.

Economy:

With the economy being arguably the most important topic of the election cycle, it is also the topic most scrutinized, criticized, and debated. Both presidential candidates have starkly different visions for the economy, differing on taxes, businesses and more.

One of the more significant differences between the two candidates is their approach to tax policy. Vice President Harris wants to raise the corporate tax, which is a tax on the profits of businesses. Harris also wants to raise the income tax for people earning more than $400,000 a year and is very vocal about her plans for a small business tax credit. Another hotbed economic issue is trade policies. Harris plans to apply tariffs on targeted industries and geopolitical rivals, including Chinese technology products.

Meanwhile, former President Trump wants to reduce the corporate tax drastically. Trump plans to extend the current rates for income tax and has centered his platform around business-friendly policies. Trump also has a protectionist approach to his policies, proposing significant blanket tariffs on more all foreign imports.

Fracking:

Fracking is one of the few topics that both candidates agree on; both Harris and Trump claim that they will not ban fracking. Vice President Harris, however, is in an interesting position, since she originally stated that she would ban fracking during the 2020 election cycle. In the recent presidential debate, Harris stated that her “values had not changed,” but she now feels that “we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy, so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”

In response, former President Trump denounced Harris as a liar, saying that “If she won the election, fracking will end on day one.”