Kamala Harris went on the offensive against Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate – and a CNN poll found that she outperformed her opponent by a landslide, at 63-37 per cent.
But multiple polls also confirm that the election continues to be a dead heat, and too close to call where it matters most, in the small number of states that will swing the election. Undecided voters matter, but there are few of them in America today. Turnout is everything, and Democrats in swing states are harder to mobilize than Trump loyalists.
Pollsters say that US voters on both sides of the aisle are motivated by kitchen table issues. In the US election, that means the price of food, housing, gasoline, and medical bills. The fear that immigrants will displace workers, bring crime to the streets of America, and be a drain on services also matters.
Given this context, it is stunning that the two presidential contenders spent so much time talking about foreign policy. The debate spanned the US’s China policy, the exit from Afghanistan, the war between Israel and Hamas, border control and immigration, and the war in Ukraine.
How did foreign policy claim centre stage in an election that is focused on Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania? The answer harkens back to 2016.
Donald Trump’s election, and his messages of ‘American carnage’ and ‘America First’ led to the first genuine and sustained debate about the US’s global role since the end of the Cold War.
That debate has not been settled. It is both contentious and consequential, and it is also driving a country notoriously fixated on its own domestic concerns to take foreign policy seriously.
China
Throughout the debate, Harris and Trump offered competing narratives of the country’s current state of affairs.
For Trump, international perceptions of an America in decline were central to this narrative. Harris, meanwhile, redirected a question about the US economy to a discussion of Trump’s China policy.
Asked about inflation, Harris went on the offensive, turning her chief domestic vulnerability into an attack on Trump.
The former president had, she claimed, sold out consumers and undermined US national security by levying a ‘sales tax’ on the American people through his tariffs, which she claimed invited a trade war with Beijing and drove up the US trade deficit. She also accused the former president of ‘selling American chips to China’ to help them modernize their military.
The all too common assumption that there will be continuity on China policy under a Trump presidency was shaken if not shattered. A Harris administration will continue to put economic security at the centre of its policy agenda. This likely means domestic investment in manufacturing, especially semiconductor chips, and a continued emphasis on building resilient supply chains (manufacturing chips in Mexico is also on the cards for a Harris administration).
The range of available policy tools is vast, from subsidy clubs for critical minerals to sector-specific trade deals. But tariffs appear unlikely to be the instrument of choice for Harris, as they would be for Trump.
For Harris, partnerships and alliances will continue to be at the centre of US strategy. But Democrats are engaged in a debate about whether to place US–China rivalry at the centre of foreign policy, or whether to have a global strategy of which China is a part. Trump has offered more clarity: his approach would be transactional and also free from the constraints of multilateralism or alliances.
Migration
Both candidates talk tough on immigration, and their policy focuses on enforcement. But the similarities stop there. In the debate, Trump sought to conjure up images of criminal immigrants eating dogs, and maybe also cats.
Harris pinned responsibility on Trump for urging Republicans to block a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year, simply to cause chaos and bolster his electoral prospects. Trump was quick to remind viewers of the rising numbers of immigrants at the border in what proved to be a December crisis for Democrats.
Trump’s attack on immigrants has been effective at stirring up public concern and has forced Democrats to tack to the right. Creative solutions and legal pathways have taken a back seat to an approach that gives priority to enforcement of strict controls at the border.
Instead, innovative thinking has found an alternative home. The International Organization for Migration is attempting a transformation in immigration strategy, one that would link employers in need of labour to migrants in need of work.
Such solution-based work could create win-win solutions for Western societies with aging populations. But for now, Trump’s anti-immigrant narrative has taken root and electoral competition has crowded out a more serious discussion.
Ukraine
The debate gave those voters already firmly set in their views plenty of scope to confirm their biases.
For voters already committed to Trump, the debate will not matter too much. Trump bottled his message to them very tightly: Harris has been second in command during an administration that has seen two major wars, chaos on the international stage, and the nation ‘laughed at all over the world’.
For Europeans, Trump’s debate rhetoric will have confirmed their fears. In what are now familiar lines of attack, Trump accused Europe of free riding on US largesse, and continued to demand that Europe pay for its own security.
