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September 3rd 2024

A sharp round-up of the most important political news

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The US in brief

A sharp round-up of the most important political news

Democrats spent Labor Day making the case that they were the party of the worker. Kamala Harris visited Michigan and Pennsylvania. In the former, she criticised Mr Trump for cutting overtime and lowering taxes on the rich, and said that if elected he would raise costs for ordinary Americans. In the latter, she said that US Steel, currently the target of an acquisition attempt by Nippon Steel worth $15bn, should remain “American owned”. Tim Walz, her running-mate, did his part too. At “Laborfest”, a union event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin he told a crowd that he was not “in the pocket” of labour, but rather (somewhat confusingly) “I am the pocket.”

More than 10,000 hotel workers spent their Labor Day on strike demanding higher pay and better working conditions. Nearly half of those who walked off the job were in Hawaii, but members of the Unite Here union also downed tools in major cities around the country. The strikes may last up to three days.

The Harris campaign will begin a massive advertising blitz on Tuesday, spending $170m on television spots in battleground states and a further $200m on streaming platforms like YouTube and Spotify. According to the campaign, it will be the biggest such spend by “any political organisation ever”. Ms Harris certainly has the cash—she has raised over $500m since becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate in August.

The Transport Security Administration expects that as many as 17m people will take flights between August 29th and September 4th as they travel for Labor Day. That’s good news for low-cost carriers, but is unlikely to pull them out of their current nosedive. The share prices of America’s four biggest LCCs have fallen by nearly 50%, on average, since the start of 2023.

Rent control

With Ms Harris and Mr Trump promising to curb the rising cost of living, the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against RealPage, a property-software platform that landlords use to set rents, seems timely. But rather than taking aim at landlords gathered in a smoke-filled room to fix prices, the DoJ is targeting a pricing algorithm. Read our story about its allegation that rents are rigged.

A view from elsewhere
In their treatment of J.D. Vance, Democrats have shown “a kind of obliviousness” to their own “contemptuousness”, wrote Konrad Yakabuski in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper. Just as they have ridiculed him, Democrats have been “too dismissive of the alienation of white working-class voters”. If they keep it up, they “just might succeed in making Mr. Vance vice-president in November”.

We want to hear from you
Readers are sending us lots of thoughtful emails so we’ve decided to publish some every Wednesday. If you have views on what is happening in America drop us a line at usib@economist.com. And, of course, we still welcome your feedback on this newsletter.

Editor’s picks

Our latest US coverage

The American election

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Steven Teles, a political scientist, on the three Ps that the Democratic nominee should focus on

Golden moment

Will interest-rate cuts turbocharge oil prices?

As the Fed prepares to ease policy, traders (and presidential candidates) hold their breath

From the archive

The South is fast becoming America’s industrial heartland

Joe Biden’s manufacturing boom is accelerating the region’s rise

Today’s forecast

Our forecast reckons that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have nearly equal chances of winning the election in November.

Daily quiz

From Monday to Thursday we’ll quiz you on all things America. This week’s winner is Sonia Barrad in Long Beach, California. The answers were:

Monday: The official name of the “Sears Tower” is the Willis Tower.

Tuesday: Electricity had its American debut at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. So too did the incandescent lights and ferris wheel it powered.

Wednesday: In John Hughes’ “Ferris Bueller’s day off” the eponymous character pretends to be ill to go on a tour of Chicago with his mates.

Thursday: McDonald’s founded Hamburger University.

From Monday to Thursday we’ll quiz you on all things America. This week’s winner is Sonia Barrad in Long Beach, California. The answers were:

Monday: The official name of the “Sears Tower” is the Willis Tower.

Tuesday: Electricity had its American debut at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. So too did the incandescent lights and ferris wheel it powered.

Wednesday: In John Hughes’ “Ferris Bueller’s day off” the eponymous character pretends to be ill to go on a tour of Chicago with his mates.

Thursday: McDonald’s founded Hamburger University.

From Monday to Thursday we’ll quiz you on all things America.

Tuesday: In 1894 President Grover Cleveland signed a bill making Labour Day a federal holiday. What event precipitated that decision?

Monday: Where was the first Labour Day parade held in 1882?

See how to take part in the quiz at the bottom of this page.

If you enjoyed this week’s quiz, play Dateline, The Economist’s new history game.

Figure of the day

Around 10,000, the number of rear-end collisions that occur on America’s roads every day. Read our new analysis showing how Americans’ love affair with big cars is killing them.

Heard on MSNBC

He just doesn’t give a shit about them.

—Fred Trump III thinks that his uncle, Donald Trump, doesn’t care about soldiers.

Read all of our recent coverage of the 2024 election. Confused about a term? Check out our A-Z of American politics.

Also from The Economist

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