By Nandita Bose and Gabriella Borter
(Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday was set to propose new incentives to boost domestic manufacturing, a day after her Republican rival Donald Trump said he would seek to “take” factory jobs from other countries if he wins back the White House.
Speaking in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 5 presidential election was due to lay out policies to build on her platform of home-buyer subsidies, small business tax breaks and a federal ban on grocery price gouging.
“We gather at a moment of great consequence. In this election, I believe we have an extraordinary opportunity to make our middle class the engine of America’s prosperity,” she said at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh.
Harris was also expected to touch on her plan to work with the private sector and entrepreneurs to help grow the middle class in the speech that started around 3:30 pm EDT (1930 GMT), according to a senior campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The vice president and Trump are focusing their campaign messaging on the economy, which Reuters/Ipsos polling shows is voters’ top concern, as the election approaches.
Harris is highlighting her “middle-class” upbringing as the child of a single mother, in contrast with Trump, the wealthy son of a New York real estate developer. She plans to tell voters her policies are pragmatic and not rooted in ideology. While Trump has proposed across-the-board tariffs on foreign-made goods – a proposal backed by a slim majority of voters – Harris is focusing on providing incentives for businesses to keep their operations in the U.S.
Harris in recent months has blunted Trump’s advantage on the economy, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday showing the Republican candidate with a marginal advantage of 2 percentage points on “the economy, unemployment and jobs,” down from an 11-point lead in late July.
