Can Kamala Harris strike the right balance on foreign policy?

Hello Swamp Things. Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator, is my respondent today, so I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about Kamala Harris and foreign policy.

Harris and Joe Biden have been in sync about most aspects of foreign affairs, with the exception of Gaza. Harris called for an immediate cease fire as early as March, breaking with the president in a way that I think will benefit her in November. Young people on college campuses have been protesting US policy around Gaza for months, and many of them are feeling more excited and engaged to have a candidate that’s on the same page that they are when it comes to Israel’s war. So, score one for Harris.

Unlike Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, who wants to pull support for Ukraine — since the US apparently doesn’t have enough bullets to help defend both Europe and Asia from autocracy — Harris would undoubtedly continue US support in the region. She would also back Nato (another differentiator between the Harris and Trump campaigns). So far, so good. 

Where things get more complicated for her is in the area of geoeconomics, and the US-China relationship. As one White House insider told me last week, “She’s a prosecutor, not an economics person. She’s not sitting up at night reading about the post-neoliberal world order.” So where would Harris stand in relation to Biden’s own populist approach on that front?

Let’s start with tariffs and trade. On the one hand, as California senator she refused to support a renegotiated Nafta because it didn’t do enough for climate. On the other hand, she’s been critical of the Trump administration’s tariff plans and says “I’m not a protectionist Democrat.” The folks I’ve talked to in trade policy circles in the US are very much in wait-and-see mode about what Harris’s approach to things like Chinese dumping or new trade deals would look like. 

While being a bit of a cipher has its political advantages, it also puts her at risk with labour left progressives and working people in industrial states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which is where the election will be won or lost. They want to see a clear, pro-tariff, pro-re-industrialisation message. Yes, most unions (with the notable exceptions, so far, of the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters) have endorsed her, but endorsements aren’t votes.

I’ve heard many progressive insiders say they want to see Harris be a lot more vocal about the Bidenomics approach to things like concentration of power, be it in companies (like Big Tech platforms) or countries (like China). “Taking on corporate powers that drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, price gouge prescription drugs, pollute our air and water and privatise public services is one of the best ways to appeal to working-class voters, particularly those without college degrees,” says Nikhil Goyal, a Vermont delegate for Harris and former senior policy adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders.  

Harris needs to get out in front of this issue, particularly since a number of her wealthy supporters (like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and IAC chair Barry Diller) are publicly pushing for her to fire Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, who’s done more than anyone to combat corporate power. She is at risk with working people if she’s seen as being weak on billionaires, or on China. To me, that’s her only political risk factor right now. She can’t afford to be painted with the same brush that Hillary Clinton was in 2016, when Republicans successfully cast her as a coastal globalist detached from the concerns of working people.

I expect that Harris will give her first foreign policy speech within the next couple of weeks, and she’ll need to find a way to use the political reset to appeal to a broader Democratic base without losing the voters Biden won over because of his stance on trade and deindustrialisation.

Gideon, any brilliant ideas about how she could do that in a way that would also make the rest of the world feel good about a Harris administration?

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Gideon Rachman responds

Hi Rana,

Elections are traditionally won on domestic issues, with foreign affairs only playing a minor role. But — as you point out — the distinction between foreign and domestic is becoming a bit blurred. So Harris will have to tread a very fine line on foreign policy.

Gaza plays into the domestic culture wars. Trade becomes an issue about jobs and inflation. And Trump will certainly want to suggest that America’s first woman president would be too weak to be commander-in-chief.

I have no illusions that whatever Harris says about foreign policy between now and election day will be driven by domestic politics. She has already taken the opportunity of Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US to stake out a more critical posture on Israel. That is important for young and progressive voters. 

But she also doesn’t want to alienate centrist voters who might be worried that her position on Gaza puts her too close to the radical left. The fact that her husband is Jewish will provide her with some protection against the inevitable allegations of anti-semitism. So I think Harris will attempt to find another issue on which to take an unexpectedly hawkish position. Don’t be surprised if she calls for a significant increase in defence spending.

The trade issues are more complex. I suspect that, in policy terms, she has no problem with Biden’s “Green New Deal”. Politically, I think Harris is going to want to put more emphasis on climate issues than Biden did — as part of her attempt to mobilise young voters. But she will have to be careful not to make herself vulnerable to the Trump-Vance attack that she is going to drive up gas prices and destroy industrial jobs in the process.

Protectionism is a tricky one. Of course, there is no way that Harris will repudiate the tariffs that Biden has already imposed. But I believe that she will oppose the swinging new tariffs that the Trump-Vance team are already committed to. The politics of this is that Harris and her team know that the Biden administration is vulnerable on inflation. She will argue that Trump’s new tariffs would be highly inflationary and a tax on American workers. As it happens, I think that is right.

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And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “What Kamala should do now”:

“I doubt that taxing the richest US citizens will create sufficient revenue to cover public transfers to those left behind at a scale with real impact, unless the tax-rate is extremely high, but that risks an exodus like in France with the millionaire tax. To create sufficient revenue you will have to introduce progressive income taxation also covering the middle and upper-middle class . . . Alternatively give people a decent salary they can live on. The problem in the US and countries like the UK and France is that the ruling class benefits from a large pool of low or unskilled workers. The result is political polarisation.” — Claus Grube