MOSINEE, Wis. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is traveling to Wisconsin on Saturday to hold a rally that will focus on the economy, his first trip to the deep-red, mostly rural part of the key swing state.
Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have spoken at greater length about their plans for the economy in the days leading up to Tuesday’s presidential debate, where their competing proposals are expected to take center stage.
Trump promised on Thursday to bring about a “national economic renaissance” by raising tariffs, reducing regulations to boost energy production and drastically cutting government spending and corporate taxes on companies that produce in the United States.
Harris this week called for raising the corporate tax rate, not taxing tips and benefits, and expanding tax breaks for compact businesses to encourage entrepreneurship.
Both Harris and Trump have been recurrent voters in Wisconsin this year, a state where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than one percentage point. Several polls of Wisconsin voters conducted after President Joe Biden withdrew showed a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump.
Democrats view Wisconsin as one of the must-win “blue wall” states. Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes. Trump won the state in 2016 by a slightly larger margin of nearly 23,000 votes.
Trump brought his economic message to the central Wisconsin city of Mosinee, population about 4,500, in Wisconsin’s mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a “purple” state. Trump won the district that includes Mosinee by 18 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020.
Democrats have relied on high turnout in the state’s two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, to counter Republican strength in rural areas like Mosinee and the Milwaukee suburbs. Trump needs to win votes in places like Mosinee to have any chance of eroding the Democrats’ lead in urban areas.
The Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee in July and Trump has already visited the state four times, most recently last week in the city of La Crosse in western Wisconsin.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had met last month at the same Milwaukee arena where the Republicans held their convention for a rally that coincided with the Democratic convention in Chicago, just 90 miles away. Walz returned to Milwaukee on Monday, where he spoke at a Labor Day rally organized by unions.
Biden was in rural western Wisconsin on Thursday, his first visit to the state since dropping out of the race. Biden used the visit to announce $7.3 billion in investments for 16 cooperatives that will provide electricity to rural areas in 23 states. The goal is to reduce the cost of much-needed internet connections in hard-to-reach areas.
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Bauer reported from Madison.
