With the presidential election of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump just months away, the power to touch every business and consumer in the U.S., plus billions more worldwide, is up for grabs in November. With both political parties eager to reshape U.S. engagement in the global economy, how do the two candidates differ, and who’s going to be best for the American consumers and businesses?

This piece was originally reported by Geoff Colvin.

Who’s Better For Your Wallet, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

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With the presidential election of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump just months away, the power to touch every business and consumer in the U.S. is up for grabs in November.

Just a few months ago as Trump and Biden walked on to the debate stage. The election we were expecting was looking like a boring rerun. He challenged me to a golf match. He can't hit a ball 50 yards. I told you before, I'm happy to play golf. If you carry your own bag, you can do it. But now we go to breaking news of an apparent shooting at a rally for former US president Donald Trump. Donald Trump has made his choice. Ohio Senator. We're effectively run in this country by a bunch of childless cat ladies in this unprecedented campaign this season. The likes of which we have never seen before. President Biden has just announced that he is ending his re election bill. The president in a tweet just announcing that he is offering his full support and endorsement for Kamala Harris. Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Kamala Harris? And now says Minnesota, Governor Tim walls as her running mate. These guys are just weird now, with two vastly different candidates, there's two possible futures for the country depending on who wins the presidency, this November, but with over one out of every three voters citing either inflation jobs or the economy as the most important issue on their mind. It's clear that Americans are focused on their wallets in 2024 to get insights on the differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. We spoke with Fortune, senior editor at March. I'm Jeff Colvin. I recently wrote an article about the two candidates for the presidency and which one would be best for business. Probably the biggest economic issue that will face the next president, whoever it is involves a tax bill that was enacted in 2017. A big once in a generation of tax bill and it is scheduled to expire at the end of next year at the end of 2025 when it passed the bill did cut taxes for a vast majority of Americans regardless of their income level. But since 2017, the perception of that law has been mixed with many saying it favors the wealthy supporters of the bill, particularly the Republicans trying to pass. It originally defended these high income and corporate tax cuts by assuring the benefits would trickle. How are these tax cuts going to help the blue collar workers? And we're going to give this business an ability to write off the investments that they make in this business to buy more machines, to hire more workers to raise wages. But data from 2018 showed it had very little effect on wages and in 2022 the tax policy Center reported that extending the law would add $3 trillion to the federal debt. While a majority of the tax cuts would benefit the wealthy Republicans in general are in favor of not letting it expire. The Democrats in general are in favor of letting it expire if it does expire. Taxes on non corporate businesses like sole proprietorships will go up taxes on corporations could go up personal income, taxes would go up for high income people and maybe for not so high income people as well. But taxes aren't the only economic policy. Harris and Trump disagree on. There's a few other ways the candidates differ that will have huge influences on the economy. Other big economic issues that will face the next president include labor. The Democrats have generally been very pro labor and it must be said that President Biden has absolutely been the most pro labor president ever. It's true. Despite criticism over his handling of a 2022 railroad strike, Biden has continued to make headlines throughout his term for pro labor actions including becoming the first president in history to stand on a picket line. And even though Biden is no longer in the race, it's very likely that Kamala would hold similar stances on labor. Donald Trump. On the other hand, is trying to attract members of labor unions to vote for him, but the labor unions themselves have been very, very against him, the A FL CIO called his term as President Catastrophic. And on top of labor, Harris and Trump both differ on immigration and regulation, both of which are particularly important to ceos and business leaders under Biden. There have been enormous numbers of people coming to the southern border and in recent months, he has tried to change his policy there. I certain that Kamala Harris will want to continue getting this under control. Donald Trump was very tough on immigration when he was President Trump has said he would launch the biggest deportation ever. It's worth mentioning. However, that when he was president last time, he also said he was going to impose an enormous deportation and he simply didn't do it. Another issue that's of great importance to business is regulation. When Donald Trump was president, he pulled back on regulation and I've spoken to many CEO s who say yes, absolutely. From the day uh Donald Trump became president, they could feel the difference when they were dealing with the regulatory authorities. President Biden has gone the other way. He's made the regulatory authorities much more active making things frankly tougher for business. Similarly, if Harris becomes president, she will almost certainly continue the very activist regulatory policy that Biden has had. But despite all their differences, there's one thing Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both agree on and it's costing Americans billions of dollars tariffs, a tariff is a tax in essence, so that if a company in the United States wants to buy something from another country. Then the company here in the US has to pay something to the US Treasury. So politicians on both sides of the aisle, take advantage of this widespread belief that tariffs are paid by the exporting country. For example, Trump now candidate Trump has said the tariffs he imposed on China brought billions of dollars into the US Treasury, which is true. But he doesn't mention that those billions of dollars didn't come from China. They came from people and companies, consumers employees in the United States. Strangely, both of the major political parties in America have abandoned nearly eight decades of focus on free trade and have chosen to embrace tariffs. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that the Trump tariffs are costing a middle level household about $1700 a year. Now that calculation hasn't been done for the current Biden tariffs specifically. However, those tariffs are still quite similar, but if it's costing their voters thousands every year, why are they doing this? Well, both candidates want to look tough on one particular country. China. Trump started this trade war in 2018 and he had famously said trade wars are good and easy to win. It was not just the Trump administration that liked it because when Biden became president, he made a lot of changes to Trump's policies, but he barely touched the tough tariffs. Think about what happened in just the past couple of years when inflation became a really serious problem here in the United States for the first time in a long time, one clear way to try to reduce that is to reduce tariffs and yet they didn't do it. Those tariffs are very important politically because they show that the administration is being tough on China, which counts for a lot in politics today. So with all this in mind, when determining who was the best candidate for Americans wallets, there's not really a simple solution. Consumers are clear losers from tariffs. Tariffs simply increase costs as far as which candidate would be the best president for business. It's not an easy answer to come up with CEO S are looking at it as pretty much a flip of the coin and it's frankly, they won't quite say this. CEO S won't quite say it, but they don't really like either one. They find different things to dislike about the two candidates, but it's hard to say which one they like best or maybe I should say worse.