Where Does Kamala Harris Stand on Climate, Trade and Tech?
President Joe Biden announced Sunday he had chosen to end his campaign for re-election.
Vice President Kamala Harris has already solidified and announced her plan to run, with Biden’s endorsement, as well as the endorsements of other top-ranking Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
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While other Democrats could decide to challenge Harris for the nomination, that may prove an uphill battle, given that the party can use the campaign funds from the Biden-Harris ticket for Harris and her running mate, whom she has yet to announce.
Harris’ time spent as a senator, a district attorney, an attorney general and, most recently, the country’s vice president, has given her a lengthy history on a variety of voter issues. Her work and stance on environmental considerations gave her a unique spotlight during the last election cycle, where she ran for president but ultimately dropped out before any votes were cast.
This time around, her policies—on sustainability, trade, technology and more—could make a real impact on the apparel, supply chain, logistics and retail industries in a way they never had a chance to during the last election cycle.
Environmental policy and climate change
Harris has historically put an onus on emissions reduction, climate justice and environmental health during her tenure as a politician, leaning left of Biden’s stances prior to her acceptance of the vice presidential nomination.
Though she has largely gone along with the Biden administration’s climate-related projects during this presidential term, some of her own, more left-leaning aspirations for the environment got left on the campaign trail in 2020. Fracking is just one example of the differences between the sitting president’s actions and the now-potential president’s platform in previous years.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said during her last campaign for the presidency.
Ultimately, Biden has not taken that same approach, focusing primarily on ending fracking on federal land and working to halt new leases for fracking. But Harris’ stance on fracking is far from the only reason that many consider her an opponent of big oil and fossil fuels.
As a senator, Harris also co-sponsored the Green New Deal, which was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in 2019 and was, where climate is concerned, aimed at sourcing clean energy for all of the country’s power demand by 2030. While the initiative never made much progress in Congress, some of its pieces aligned with Harris’ own plan in her last presidential jaunt.
During her 2019 campaign for the presidency, Harris proposed a $10 trillion climate plan, which she said would have used private and public spending to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, with the end goal of reaching a net-zero economy by 2045. She also proposed instituting a carbon tax.
Trucking and logistics
Related to her environmental work, Harris took a few steps toward electrification and decarbonization of trucks and ports during her tenure as Biden’s second in command.
In 2022, she announced that the Department of Transportation (DOT) would encourage grant applications for the Port Infrastructure Development Program, centered around emission reduction, air quality improvement in communities adjacent to high-polluting facilities or ports and more.
In 2021, Harris announced that the administration would pump $127 million into the Supertruck 3 program, which is meant to help companies decarbonize medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
Recipients of the program’s third round included PACCAR, Daimler, Ford, Volvo Group North America and General Motors. The companies’ efforts focused around projects like bringing electric trucks to payload parity with diesel trucks, developing more efficient battery and fuel cell-electric vehicles and more.
Trade
Harris’ stance on the climate has also impacted her position on trade. As a senator, she was just one of 10 to oppose the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), even after the addition of several provisions meant to appease the Democrats.
Though the additions addressed some labor and environmental considerations, for Harris, its protections weren’t far reaching enough.
“I can tell you that in a Harris administration, there would be no trade deal that would be signed unless it protected American workers and it protected our environment,” she said in 2019 during her presidential campaign.
In 2016, while Harris campaigned for the Senate seat she eventually won, she opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama-era trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 other countries that was meant to ease trade and reduce tariffs. At the time, she worried that the agreement would have moved some Americans’ jobs overseas. The proposal had also faced major backlash from labor groups.
Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2017.
Artificial intelligence
While Biden has largely taken a voluntary approach to regulation of artificial intelligence in the U.S., Harris has been a bit more outspoken around her intentions to regulate the emerging technology.
She supported Biden’s executive order on AI, issued in October 2023, but also had an interest in the technology’s development and effects prior to that. In July of last year, the vice president met with labor group leaders to discuss how AI might impact their respective industries and bucked what she called the “false choice” between innovative technological advancement and protecting American citizens.
In March, Harris announced alongside the White House Office of Management and Budget that the administration had put a variety of safeguards and rules in action for federal agencies and executive offices, which included growing the AI workforce inside those entities, using AI responsibly for forward movement on issues like climate change and public health and more.
Harris seems a bit wary of AI’s potential impact if not regulated. At the moment, far-reaching, federal regulation of the technology does not exist, though some members of Congress have introduced AI-centric bills.
Just a month after Biden signed the AI executive order, Harris said at an AI safety summit in the United Kingdom that, despite its merits, AI has the potential to “endanger the very existence of humanity” and stood firmly with the stance that legislation will be needed.
“As history has shown, in the absence of regulation and strong government oversight some technology companies choose to prioritize profit over the wellbeing of their customers, the security of our communities and the stability of our democracies,” she said. “One important way to address these challenges—in addition to the work we have already done—is through legislation, legislation that strengthens AI safety without stifling innovation.”
The question over the vice presidential nominee
If Harris becomes the Democrats’ nominee, she will need to nominate a running mate; at the moment, the person she would add to her ticket remains to be seen.
So far, a number of names have emerged as potential vice presidential nominees: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ); Pete Buttigieg, the Biden administration’s secretary of transportation; Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA); Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY); Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC); Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
All of those politicians—with the exception of Whitmer—have already put their endorsement behind Harris, as have a number of trade organizations.
They also each have a different set of issues to campaign on and may appeal to different subsections of voters.
Harris is likely to select a running mate who would play well in difficult swing states; several of those potential choices, like Beshear, Cooper, Whitmer, Shapiro and Kelly, currently represent constituencies in key swing states, where voter issues like climate change and labor often prove particularly important.