Claim: Kamala Harris claimed at a campaign event on Friday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania that economists at Goldman Sachs had said Donald Trump’s economic program would cause the economy to contract, rekindle inflation, and push the economy into a recession next year.
“In fact, independent economists like Goldman Sachs have said my plan would grow our economy — (applause) — and his plan would shrink the economy, reignite inflation, and send us into a recession by the middle of next year,” Vice President Harris said, according to a transcript of the event provided by the White House.
Verdict: False.
A team of economists at Goldman Sachs issued a report earlier this month estimating the impacts of the economic policies of Harris and Trump. The report did not forecast that Trump’s economic proposals would shrink the economy. It did not predict that Trump’s policies would push the economy into a recession.
The report said that Trump’s tariff policies and restrictions on immigration would likely result in a small and temporary slowing of the rate of growth of the economy, not an outright contraction and not a recession. It found that Trump’s policies would result in growth being a half-percentage point lower in the second half 2025 and that this effect would go away by 2026.
“We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse, resulting in a peak hit to GDP growth of -0.5pp in 2025H2 that abates in 2026,” Goldman wrote in the report.
Harris’s statement also exaggerates Goldman’s view of the effect on growth of her policy proposals. It found that if Harris were to win and Demcorats captured both the House and Senate, there would be only a “very slight” boost to GDP, with the stimulative impact of more government spending offset by a decrease in investment due to higher corporate taxes. If Harris wins with a divided government, the effect would be “neutral on net.”
Harris has a history of making false statements about the economy. Last week, Harris repeated her false claim that the Biden-Harris administration inherited the “worst unemployment since the Great Depression.” In fact, unemployment had fallen to 6.4 percent by the time Trump left office, below where it was in Barack Obama’s first term in the White House, nearly equal to the worst month under George W. Bush, and lower than it was at the end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency and the start of Bill Clinton’s. In fact, the unemployment rate has been above 6.4 percent in 259 months since 1948, or 28 percent of the time.
During her debate with Trump last month, Harris said that the trade deficit was one of the highest ever seen in the nation’s history. This is completely false. The trade deficit has been higher under the Biden-Harris administration and was higher under Bush.
Harris has also exaggerated the growth of manufacturing jobs during the Biden-Harris administration and mischaracterized the state of the economy when Trump left office.