Trailing in polls, Trump campaign descends on NC to pitch economic plan

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launched a series of speeches in North Carolina Wednesday focused on cost-of-living and tax issues — an effort to pick up lost ground in this battleground state as economic indicators point in a direction that could favor his Democratic opponent.

“We could have such a better economy for working families if we actually had smarter policies,” Vance said in an interview with WRAL Wednesday prior to a speech at Raleigh’s Union Station.

During the one-on-one interview and a 20-minute speech, he criticized the Biden administration’s energy and immigration policies, saying they’re contributing to higher prices for basic goods. And he sought to link those policies to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“When you increase the cost of energy, you increase the cost of everything else,” Vance said. “So a lot of this is simply about better leadership. We could do so much better. We just have to get a better person in the White House. And that’s, of course, why I’m here.”

Harris has a slight edge over Trump in the neck-and-neck race for North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes, and as voters in the state consider the economy their top issue heading into the November election. Trump, who is scheduled to speak in Wilmington on Saturday, had led Harris in the state shortly after she took over the nomination from President Joe Biden, who dropped his campaign in July.

The visits by Trump and Vance come at a complicated juncture for their campaign. Recent and expected economic developments could help Harris and challenge Trump’s efforts to focus on a message of economic anxiety.

Gas prices have dropped in the past year, inflation has cooled, and the Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to lower interest rates for the first time in four years — a move expected to reduce borrowing costs and possibly improve voters’ perception of the economy under the Biden administration.

With the race in North Carolina still close — a recent WRAL News Poll found Harris leading Trump 49% to 46%, essentially a statistical tie — the big question will be whose economic message resonates best with the remaining few undecided voters.

“Trump and Vance will most likely … pivot back to the economic doom that is their message,” said political scientist Michael Bitzer of Catawba University. “And thanks to the intensity of partisanship and polarized loyalty, they will convince their base voters that it is that bad economically.”

During his interview with WRAL, Vance said Trump would reduce grocery costs by encouraging more domestic energy production, which he said would make energy cheaper and lower the prices of everything else. And he said that, despite the rate cut and other positive economic indicators, families are still struggling.

“A half point is nothing compared to what American families have been dealing with the last three years,” Vance said during the interview, which was conducted shortly after the Federal Reserve’s cut. “It’s not going to help those families a whole lot. It’s better than nothing.”

Asked how Trump would address the high cost of childcare, Vance said some of the federal grant money used to fund child care centers should go directly to families who could use it to pay neighbors or churches for child care instead.

“If you expand those options, you’re actually not just going to make families better off,” he said. “You’re going to lower the cost.”

Ahead of Vance’s visit, the Trump campaign issued multiple statements slamming Harris for inflation, blaming her for rising prices. “From groceries to the housing market, North Carolinians know Kamala Harris’ America is unaffordable,” the Trump campaign wrote in one statement.

Economic indicators improving

When asked to rank the importance of 10 issues, likely voters in North Carolina picked the economy as the most important issue, followed by public safety, a WRAL News Poll released last week showed.

The poll also found that only 45% of North Carolinians are optimistic about their own economic outlook over the next year, while 33% feel pessimistic and the remaining 22% aren’t sure how to feel.

Dory MacMillan, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign in North Carolina, said in advance of Vance’s speech that it’s clear many voters aren’t buying the attacks against Harris.

“Voters here are ready for a leader like Vice President Harris, who will cut taxes for working families, invest in small businesses, and bring down the cost of housing and groceries for families across our state,” MacMillan said.

In the Triangle, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded was $2.91 on Wednesday, down 17% from a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association.

Metrics like that could make it harder for the Trump administration to land convincing attack lines about Harris and inflation, economists and political scientists say.

The Federal Reserve’s decision Wednesday to cut interest rates by half a point — an hour before Vance was scheduled to take the stage in Raleigh — in particular could hurt the campaign’s efforts to play on voters’ economic frustration, since rate cuts are widely viewed as good news.

Lower interest rates are likely to make borrowing cheaper. It’s a change sought by many businesses, people with credit card debt, or consumers planning to apply for mortgages or other loans. People feel the direct effect of decisions like that, said David McLennan, a Meredith College political science professor.

Indeed, the president doesn’t control the Federal Reserve. The rate cuts are being made because the central bank is tasked with protecting the economy — not because it was ordered to do so in the heat of a presidential race, said economist Michael Walden, a retired N.C. State University professor. “This shouldn’t be viewed as a Biden-Harris policy,” he said. But he added that the reduction will create some economic optimism.

Some economists might view the Fed’s actions as “a too-late move by the Fed to avoid a recession,” Walden added. He disagrees with that gloomier view, but he said it could be bad for Harris if the national analysis focuses on that angle in the days ahead.

Bitzer, the Catawba professor, said improving economic indicators harm Trump’s message of “economic doom” and themes suggesting that Trump is the solution, Bitzer said. And while dedicated Trump voters will likely still go along with that message, a still-unanswered question is what the estimated 5% of undecided voters in North Carolina think about Trump’s economic messaging versus Harris’s, he said.

“As is always the case, economic issues tend to be the main driver of voter choices and decision making on selecting candidates,” Bitzer said.

Tariffs, mortgages, inflation

As Trump tries to regain the lead he had in polls here earlier in the year, his campaign has also spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads showing a clip of Harris saying last year that “Bidenomics is working.”

Under Biden, job creation has boomed. Unemployment has reached record lows. The stock market has also set multiple record highs. But inflation has also climbed, and Trump’s ads focus on the rising cost of groceries and housing as they hammer Harris for praising Biden’s record. The ads seek to capitalize on polls that give Trump an edge on economic issues.

Harris herself has tried changing the narrative on her administration’s economic record. In a Raleigh speech last month Harris rolled out a series of new economic proposals she’d support if elected president. One main plan on housing is a proposed $25,000 credit toward down payments for first-time homebuyers. On inflation, she promised aggressive crackdowns on companies accused of colluding to raise prices rather than competing against one another.

Ahead of her Republican challengers’ visits to North Carolina this week, the Trump campaign said: “Trump can be trusted to restore the American Dream because he has a real plan to defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, and make purchasing a home more affordable” — although it provided no details on what that plan might include.

Trump’s main economic idea in speeches so far this year appears to be more and higher tariffs on goods produced overseas. Many economists believe such a policy would do the opposite of what Trump claims it would do. Tariffs tend to lead to higher prices for consumers and could also cause smaller cuts to interest rates, which affect mortgage costs.

In June, the Tax Foundation think tank estimated that Trump’s proposed tariffs would amount to a $524 billion yearly tax hike that would shrink the economy and cost the equivalent of 684,000 jobs. Tariffs are popular with factory workers, however, as they could help protect some of those jobs. Many of the key swing states in the presidential election have a manufacturing presence, including North Carolina’s textiles industry.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.