Trump's And Biden's Plans For The Economy

Key Priorities: Economy

Joe Biden

• Increase investments in American-made products and companies, pouring $400 billion into procurement and $300 billion into research and development, with the aim of creating 5 million new jobs.
• Reverse Trump tax breaks to corporations and seek a higher minimum wage and expanded benefits for low- and middle-income workers.
• Read details of Biden's plans below.

Donald Trump

• Create 10 million jobs in 10 months, as well as 1 million small businesses.
• Push American companies outsourcing jobs in China back to the United States to establish 1 million new domestic jobs.
• Read details of Trump's plans below.

Biden's Plans For The Economy

The Democratic nominee's economic plans center on his Build Back Better framework, with planks on such areas as increasing domestic manufacturing and investing in clean energy.

Biden's "Made in America" plan stands as his economic nationalist alternative to Trump's "America First" policy. It would spend $400 billion in procurement, increasing the demand for American-made goods, as well as $300 billion in technological research and development. These investments would then go toward U.S. businesses that create products in fields including clean energy, cars, medicine, biotechnology, telecommunication and artificial intelligence.

The Biden campaign says the effort would generate 5 million jobs.

Biden also calls for the need to diversify the manufacturing and innovation industries by providing "historic investments" in communities of color as well as in cities and rural locations.

The Democratic nominee supports a $15 minimum wage, universal paid sick leave and 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

Biden also wants to do away with the Republican corporate tax cuts passed in 2017, vowing to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. It's part of his $4 trillion tax package that his campaign says wouldn't directly raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000.

Trump's Plans For The Economy

Trump touts the country's pre-pandemic economy, saying he's the candidate to get it back out of its deep hole.

In a list of agenda items for a second term, released in August, Trump's campaign said his priorities include creating 10 million jobs in 10 months and creating 1 million small businesses.

He supports enacting additional tax cuts and the expansion of the "opportunity zones" tax break, though he gives no estimate of by how much.

Echoing goals set during his first campaign and term in office, Trump calls for tax credits to businesses making American products. And he says he will continue to enact "fair trade deals that protect American jobs" and cut back on business regulations.

As part of his agenda on China, Trump wants to establish 1 million domestic jobs that were previously based in China and offer tax breaks for businesses to move jobs out of China and back to the U.S., focusing specifically on pharmaceutical and robotics companies that currently outsource jobs.

There are no details about these plans, apart from their inclusion on the agenda list.

The White House says it will not give federal contracts to companies that continue to manufacture products in China. The president signed an executive order in August that incentivizes federal agencies to domestically source their jobs instead of outsourcing them. Trump has signed several executive orders aimed at boosting domestic production, but critics say that loopholes have allowed government agencies to circumvent these "made in America" provisions.

See more of the major presidential candidates' key policy agendas here.

NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe and political correspondent Asma Khalid contributed to this report.

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