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00:00Thanks for joining us. I am Erin Ogunkeye. Well, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will
00:09hold rivaling rallies then in the swing state of Wisconsin this Friday. The Republican candidate
00:14will campaign in downtown Milwaukee, which is actually home to the state's most Democratic
00:20votes, while Kamala Harris will look to convince voters in a Milwaukee suburb. Now, polls suggest
00:26that the race for the state's 10 electoral college votes is razor thin, and that is not
00:32insignificant in a state where four of the past six presidential elections have been
00:37decided by less than a percentage point. Well, on Thursday, the candidates then delivered
00:45their closing arguments in the swing states of the Southwest. That's Arizona and Nevada.
00:50While Trump is hoping that dissatisfaction with Biden's immigration policy will tip the
00:54region in his favor, Kamala Harris honed in on her rivals' comments about women. Here's
00:59our regional correspondent, Wasim Kornei, with a roundup of Thursday's campaigning.
01:05A busy day for both of the main presidential candidates in the Western states this Thursday.
01:10Kamala Harris speaking to a crowd of 20,000 people in Phoenix, her opening out Los Tigres
01:14del Norte, a band of Mexican music, stars of Mexican music. And that was not a coincidence.
01:19This was a last ditch effort to try to get out the Latino vote in this state ahead of
01:24the election. Kamala Harris warning the crowd, telling them that Trump insults Latinos and
01:30that he scapegoats immigrants. There is still a large portion of the Latino vote here in
01:35this state that is still up for grabs. Twenty-nine percent of Latino voters in Arizona have yet
01:39to make up their mind, according to a recent poll. It was much of the same Northwest of
01:45here in the state of Nevada. Kamala Harris also speaking at a rally there. She was preceded
01:50by Mexican band Mana and singer Jennifer Lopez, who is from Puerto Rico. And that,
01:54of course, that place was also very much in the headlines these past few days after a
01:59comedian at Donald Trump's rally in New York on Sunday called it a floating island of garbage
02:04in the ocean. Speaking of Donald Trump, he had a very similar schedule this Thursday,
02:09trekking across three Western states, starting the day off in New Mexico, then holding a
02:13rally in Henderson, Nevada, before closing off the day in Arizona, taking part in a hurricane
02:18relief benefit event with alt-right conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. But for both of
02:24those main candidates, it was their final stops in the Western states before the election
02:28on Tuesday. Well, it was a popular campaign slogan coined by Bill Clinton's then senior
02:35aide James Carville, the economy stupid. Well, that now famous phrase meant to remind strategic
02:41strategists just how important economic matters are to voters. That was in 1992. But now over
02:47three decades on, is it still true? If you ask American voters themselves, very much so.
02:52According to Pew Research Center, eight in 10 Americans say that the economy is very important
02:58to their vote in the 2024 election. Well, that theoretically should give the Democrats an
03:03advantage. Despite bleak forecasts, the U.S. economy continued solid growth in the third
03:09corner. Inflation is finally back to pre-pandemic levels, though jobs did slow in October,
03:16according to data released just moments ago, the U.S. economy adding just 12,000 of them.
03:21Well, for more on all of this, Conor O'Kane, senior lecturer in economics at Pornmyth University,
03:26joins us on the program. Thank you for joining us, sir. So can you tell us more about this
03:32latest jobs data? How much of a difference do you think it'll make? I think at this stage,
03:37the jobs data is unlikely to make much of a difference. I think 60 million Americans have
03:44already voted. Yes, the job figures weren't as good this month, maybe as Democrats might have
03:50hoped. But there are reasons for that. We've had a couple of hurricanes. We've had strikes at the
03:55Boeing factory. So there are factors. I think, you know, one of the things that Joe Biden has been
04:01has been very much emphasizing is that unemployment is still at a 50 to 60 year historic low in the
04:08U.S. So at this stage, I'm not sure slightly underperforming recent figures are going to be
04:16a big factor. So most agree otherwise that the U.S. economy is in good shape. Why do you think
04:23that that's not translating into stronger support for the Democrats? I think it's partially due to
04:31the success of the Republican campaign. The Republicans have managed to focus the economy
04:37discussion on the cost of living. And really, if we look at the pledges, the economic pledges that
04:43each candidate is offering, they're very, very much focused on the cost of living.
04:49So how much of what any president does on the economy do you think is seen during a four year
04:55administration, especially because a lot of Joe Biden's economic program involves some long term
05:00investments, things like clean energy, bringing different industries back to the U.S., strengthening
05:05organized labor. How easy is it to see whether or not those bets paid off in just such a short
05:12period of time? What he has by economics really has been, you know, I agree lots of these investments
05:18often take decades, but actually the U.S. has had some quite quick hits his chip program. So one of
05:24the things that happened during the pandemic was that especially in the field of semiconductors,
05:29the U.S. was quite exposed because when Taiwan and China went down into lockdown,
05:35American manufacturers were left short of semiconductors. And actually, the chips program
05:41has already yielding results. America has now much moved much, much closer to kind of
05:47self-sufficiency in the area of semiconductors. So. There are long term gains to come, but they've
05:53also had some quick short term hits as well. So more broadly, what do we mean when we talk about
06:00just the economy from an electoral perspective? Are we talking about GDP, unemployment, inflation,
06:06taxes? Is it perhaps too big a term to try to analyze voter trends with? Well, America is,
06:13you know, there was a piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that, you know, the headline
06:17was the next president inherits a remarkable economy. Normally, you know, the incumbent can
06:25be attacked on some sort of fundamental, you know, growth might be good, but jobs might be good, etc.,
06:30etc. But America is in an unusual position at the moment where really all of the core fundamentals
06:37on the economy are very, very strong. So economy is also a question of perception. To what extent
06:43do you think things can be going poorly for a subset individuals, even though they appear to be
06:49the overall economy rather appears to be doing well and vice versa? Well, you know, America,
06:55so it's got inflation down under control down to back to close to target 2.1 percent. But just like
07:00the rest of the world, it has suffered an inflationary spike. And that has come through
07:05in the form of increases in energy prices and increases in food prices and increases in things
07:13like auto insurance. And we see each of the candidates focusing specifically on that. Donald
07:19Trump says he's going to organize a committee that will reduce auto insurance and energy prices by 50
07:25percent. Difficult to see how he's actually going to achieve that. But that's what he says.
07:30On the other hand, Harris is saying she's going to get the Federal Trade Commission to investigate
07:35what she sees as dominant markets in some of the food industry. So she wants to break up
07:41things like the meat industry. And she believes that will lower prices.
07:46So I guess to sum things up, who do you think stands to gain the most from
07:50Donald Trump presidency and from Kamala Harris presidency?
07:55I think the Donald Trump presidency, if you look at some of the things that he's talking about,
07:59like introducing a 20 percent tariff on all imports in the US and 60 percent on
08:06Chinese imports, I think that that's a real risk to the whole world, because if that was to happen,
08:13that would end really since 1944, since Bretton Woods Agreement. We've really had a period of
08:20a focus on free trade. And for the US to unilaterally apply 20 percent tariffs on all
08:27imports would be a real risk for the rest of the world, I would say.
08:33Conor O'Kane, senior lecturer in economics at Bournemouth University,
08:36thank you very much for coming on the show today.
08:38Thank you very much.