WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is using a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses. The business-friendly plan could water down her previous calls for higher taxes on wealthy Americans and massive corporations.
She wants to escalate the tax credit for small business startup costs from $5,000 to $50,000, with the goal of encouraging 25 million novel small business applications within four years.
Harris is expected to stop at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton outside Portsmouth and meet co-founders Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier. Their brewery received assistance opening its current location through a small business loan and installed solar panels using federal programs sponsored by the Biden administration, according to the Harris campaign.
The trip to New Hampshire represents a uncommon departure for a candidate who spends most of her time in the Midwestern and Sun Belt states that will play a key role in the November election.
Since President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president has focused on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which have been the heart of successful Democratic campaigns. She has also made constant visits to Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of which Biden narrowly won in 2020, as well as North Carolina, which she is trying to win from Republican Donald Trump.
Wednesday’s stop comes after Harris marks Labor Day on Monday with rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh and before returning to Pittsburgh on Thursday – her 10th visit to Pennsylvania in 2024.
Trump has called for a 15% corporate tax cut – a break with Biden, who proposed setting the corporate tax rate at 28% in his budget proposal in March. Harris has offered relatively few major policy proposals in the roughly six weeks since she assumed the Democratic nomination, but has not indicated that she plans to diverge much from his administration on tax policy.
Harris’ small business plan contains many positive aspects for the business community, but it contradicts another proposal Harris unveiled last month in which she promised to fight inflation by cracking down on “price gouging” by food manufacturers, which she said has unnecessarily driven up prices in grocery stores.
Harris has built her campaign on calls to grow and strengthen the American middle class, proposing that wealthy Americans and enormous corporations should pay “their fair share” in the form of higher taxes.
Both candidates are using the week before their debate to hone their economic messaging about who could do more for the middle class. Trump will speak to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
Biden, who built his campaign on promoting the middle class, won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, but Trump was much closer to winning there against Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Harris campaign says it operates 17 field offices across New Hampshire in coordination with the state Democratic Party, while Trump’s campaign operates just one.
Some Democrats in the state were upset because Biden had directed the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to participate in the party’s presidential primary this year – edging out the Iowa caucus and the nation’s first primary in New Hampshire in over a century.
Nevertheless, New Hampshire held an unsanctioned primary. Biden did not participate in it and was not on the ballot, but still won easily through a majority-vote campaign.
Trump took advantage of the change in the primary calendar, posting on his social media account that Harris “sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because they disrespected the primaries and never showed up.”
“In addition, the cost of living in New Hampshire is extremely high, energy bills are among the highest in the country, and the housing market is the most unaffordable in history,” the former president wrote. “I have defended New Hampshire’s first primary in the country and I will ALWAYS do so.”
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This story has been corrected to clarify that Harris will return to Pittsburgh on Thursday, not Friday.
