AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we continue to look at Tuesday night’s debate. Let’s turn to look at how the economy was discussed. This is Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at the ABC News presidential debate.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people. I am offering what I describe as an opportunity economy. And the best economists in our country, if not the world, have reviewed our relative plans for the future of America. What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse; mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump’s plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and, by the middle of next year, would invite a recession.

DONALD TRUMP: We are going to take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country, because I’ve never seen a worse period of time. People can’t go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else. The people of our country are absolutely dying with what they’ve done. They’ve destroyed the economy. And all you have to do it look at a poll. The polls say 80 and 85 and even 90% that the Trump economy was great, that their economy was terrible.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Stiglitz is also currently the chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute, one of the 16 Nobel economists who warned about Trump’s policies. And we’re joined by Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic and former presidential candidate. His newest book, Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People.

Professor Stiglitz, your response to what we just watched?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the fact is that he hasn’t a plan for the economy. He has made proposals that will lead to more inflation and slower growth. And it’s not only what’s going to happen in the short run. In the long run, he’s going to undermine the overall growth, the strategic advantage of the United States. Let me just give you two examples.

He has proposed enormous tariffs. Now, tariffs are just a tax. And the tariffs are on the goods that people buy every day. And those enormous tariffs will increase inflation. He has opposed the IRA. One important — it’s called the Inflation Reduction Act because there is one important provision in there that brings drug prices down. That provision says that the government can bargain with drug companies to bring prices down. He’s going to repeal that. And so drug prices are going to go up.

On the other hand, in the long run, what’s important, the reason we have a stronger economy than other countries is because of our technological innovation, our universities, science. What has he proposed? When he was president, we know the record: drastic cuts in science budgets. One of the reasons the economists agree that the American economy does well is because of the rule of law. He has done everything he can to undermine the rule of law, including he has threatened the independence of the central bank.

So, if you look together at all of his proposals, they are a set of proposals that would do very good, very well for the very rich, because he’s going to cut the taxes on the billionaires and on the rich corporations, but for the overall economy, there’s going to be higher prices, higher inflation, slower growth, more unemployment. To use a word that he uses, it would be disaster.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Professor Stiglitz, on the issue of tariffs, however, isn’t the Biden administration in somewhat a weaker position on this, given the fact that they continued the tariffs that Trump had imposed on China, as he mentioned in the debate, and that Biden is proposing, for instance, for electric vehicles and other forms of goods from China even higher tariffs?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, you know, one of the critical distinctions between Harris and Trump is moderation and balance. There are many situations where you have multiple goals, and you sort of have to balance them very carefully. One of our goals is that we have to become less dependent on China. You know, in the pandemic, we couldn’t even produce the face masks that we needed. We had to get them from China. We get transistors from Taiwan. And we have to become more independent on that, as well. But we get an awful lot of things from China, and we have to become more independent, more resilient. And that’s where the tariffs on China are sending an important signal to our firms: set up more robust supply chains. So that’s what they’re trying to do.

What does Trump want to do? He wants to increase these tariffs 50, 60%. And that would be a rupture. And who would pay the price of that rupture? It would be American consumers, American workers. We get a lot of parts that we depend on. Manufacturing would be hurt as a result. Our entire economy would be put into great stress.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, I want to bring you into this conversation. You wrote the book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People. You’ve talked about the two parties as a duopoly. Do you feel that this debate covered the issues, the economic issues that would help the most people?

RALPH NADER: No, actually, it was a lost opportunity for Kamala Harris. It’s easy to look good against Trump. He lies. He rants. He repeats eight times on the immigration lies, for example, that Juan pointed out. But she basically said she wanted to be the president of all the people. All right, well, there’s not much difference, what she said and didn’t say, with Biden.

She repeated again Israel has the right to defend itself. It’s slaughtering already over 300,000 Palestinians, bombing in Lebanon, doing whatever it wants with U.S. weapons. And she can’t get herself to say Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. They’re the ones who are occupied and oppressed for all these decades. So there’s very little difference.

She comforted the oil and gas industry, saying oil and gas production is at a record high. She was pretty weak on climate violence in terms of any detail. She didn’t go for full Medicare, just like Biden. He doesn’t like full Medicare. She reassured the military-industrial complex by saying she was going to have the best fighting force in the world. And she didn’t really get specific on taxing the undertaxed giant corporations, who are — you know, many of them are making billions of profits in the U.S. and paying no taxes or very few taxes.

She didn’t even go after Trump for his major violations of federal law and the Constitution itself. That’s the main rap on Trump. He’s a serial law violator.

And the most amazing thing, Amy, is she didn’t even make minimum wage front and center. The Democrats aren’t talking about minimum wage in any authentic ways. There are 25 million people in this country who make less than $15 an hour.

So, it’s the taboos that I’m focusing on, which is why I wrote the book and why we have the CapitolHillCitizen.com, which people can get a print copy of, first-class mail, is because if we allow all these taboos, no talk about hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare and government-guaranteed capitalism, bailouts, subsidies, giveaways, no talk about the corporate crime wave that the mainstream press reports on in terms of corporate abuses, but there’s no cracking down on corporate crooks — and she fancies herself a former prosecutor — no talk about empowering workers in unions by Kamala Harris, no talk about ending big money influence in politics, of course.

And the repetition of the debate, they all repeated. He did this — he’s a ditto man on the debates. He’s just talking to his base.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ralph, we’re going to —

RALPH NADER: But she had a lot of opportunities to widen the debates. If you don’t widen the debates, widen the framework of public dialogue, you cannot pay attention to the damage that’s being done to our democratic society — 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ralph —

RALPH NADER: — and the role of workers and consumers.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph, we’re going to continue this debate, and it will clearly be one, between you and Professor Stiglitz after the show and post it online at democracynow.org.