NORTH HAMPTON, N.H. - Vice President Kamala Harris heads to swing state New Hampshire on Wednesday in her 2024 showdown with former President Donald Trump, as she aims to spell out more of her economic vision for the nation.
The vice president will use an event at Throwback Brewery, a popular brewery and eatery in New Hampshire's Seacoast, to propose a tenfold-expansion of a new small business tax deduction and announce that she aims for 25 million applications for small businesses during the first term of a Harris presidency.
However, the trip to New Hampshire, a down-ballot general election battleground that Democrats have won in five straight presidential contests but remains competitive in White House races, is also seen as a chance for Harris to ease any remaining hard feelings from the Democratic Party's move to upend New Hampshire from its traditional role holding the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
The plan Harris is proposing would expand the current $5,000 startup-expense deduction for small businesses [costs for such things as market surveys, ads, and training costs for workers that small businesses shell out before they even open] to $50,000.
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The proposal would also offer new businesses more flexibility in deciding when they can claim the larger deduction, which could lead to a bigger benefit.
"The Vice President’s plan would dramatically expand support for Americans who start a small business, cut unnecessary red tape," the Harris campaign touted.
Harris and Trump have vastly different visions when it comes to business taxes. The vice president last month proposed raising the rate that major companies pay from 21% to 28%, describing it as "a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share."
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Her move is in-line with President Biden, whose budget proposal in March also called for setting the corporate tax rate at 28%. If realized, it would constitute a major rollback of the 2017 tax cuts, the signature domestic legislation passed during the Trump administration that dramatically cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Trump, as he runs to return to the White House, has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15%.
The Harris stop in New Hampshire is her first since 2021, and it is a break from her visits since replacing Biden six and a half weeks ago at the top of the Democrats' national ticket, including visits to the seven key battleground states [Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada] that decided the 2020 presidential election and will likely determine the winner of the 2024 contest.
While New Hampshire remains a very competitive general election state, it has been 24 years since a Republican won the state’s four electoral votes, when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush carried the state in his 2000 White House election.
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Trump lost New Hampshire by a razor-thin margin eight years ago to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but four years ago, he was defeated by Biden by seven points in New Hampshire.
Fast-forward four years, and Biden enjoyed a small advantage over Trump in public opinion polling in the Granite State until his disastrous performance in a late June debate against his White House predecessor. In the wake of that debate, polls indicated a margin-of-error race in New Hampshire.
However, Harris has enjoyed a wave of momentum and energy since taking over for Biden, and the latest polling in New Hampshire indicates the vice president holds a single digit lead over the former president.
"The vice president is not going to take any vote for granted, and by coming here to New Hampshire, she wants to make sure that everybody should hear her message and cast their vote for her," longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley told Fox News.
The Trump campaign, ahead of the Harris visit, emphasized that "President Trump’s campaign maintains an on-the-ground presence in New Hampshire, including staff and offices, while Kamala Harris is parachuting in because she knows that the Granite State is in play."
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In reality, the Harris campaign and the Democrats have 17 campaign offices across the Granite State and enjoy a healthy ground game advantage over the Trump campaign and Republicans in the state.
Trump took to social media on the eve of the Harris trip to charge that the vice president "sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up."
He also criticized Harris over inflation and housing prices, two top issues in New Hampshire. "The cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history," Trump argued.
The former president's claim that Harris "disrespected" New Hampshire points back to the move in late 2022 and early last year by the Democratic National Committee – following Biden's lead – to bump New Hampshire from its traditional role as the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state.
New Hampshire – adhering to a state law that mandates its presidential primary goes first, did just that – which meant the state's Jan. 23 nominating contest was unsanctioned on the Democratic side.
Biden kept his name off the ballot and both he and Harris steered clear of the state, but thanks to a well-organized write-in effort by New Hampshire's Democratic establishment leaders, the president easily won the primary over his long-shot challengers.
The president returned to New Hampshire in March after locking up the Democratic nomination, for a visit that was seen in the political world as an olive branch to Granite Staters.
The Republicans did not alter New Hampshire's lead off position in their presidential nominating calendar.
Trump, who has not visited New Hampshire since winning the GOP primary on Jan. 23, touted in his social media post, "I protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will!"
Additionally, in an interview Wednesday morning on "Good Morning New Hampshire with Jack Heath," Trump said, "Oh yeah, I'll be there – that's a very important place for me," when asked if he would return to the state before Election Day.
