The CEO of Goldman Sachs chimed in regarding Kamala’s comments made on the Tuesday, September 10 debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris hosted by ABC News. Namely, he noted that the supposed Goldman Sachs report that says her “plan” has economic benefits isn’t as big a deal as she made it sound.
As background, during the debate, Vice President Harris said, “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.” Then, connecting the dots to Goldman, she said, “What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse, mine would strengthen the economy.”
The CEO of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, said during an appearance on CNBC on Wednesday, September 11, that the report isn’t anywhere near as big a deal as she seemed to suggest. He said, “So, that report, which was mentioned last night in the debate, came from an independent analyst, and it’s interesting, Scott, I think a lot more has been made of this than should be.”
Continuing, Mr. Solomon noted that all the report to which Kamala Harris referred was meant to do was model the potential impacts of each candidate’s policies on GDP growth. He said, “What the report did is it looked at a handful of policy issues that have been put out by both sides, and it tried to model their impact on GDP growth.”
He added that, doing that, the finding was that Kamala’s policies might, according to the report, positively impact GDP by a fraction of a percentage point more than Trump’s policies.”The reason I say a bigger deal has been made of it is what it showed is the difference between the sets of policies that they’ve put forward is about two-tenths of 1%.”
Emphasizing how speculative the report that Kamala cited when arguing with former President Trump during the debate is and how small the potential difference in economic outcomes the report found could happen if certain policies are implemented was, Mr. Solomon noted, “So, the economy grows, if you took these particular sets of policies they looked at — and by the way, we have no idea whether these policies, these things that are talked about, will ultimately be implemented — and what was the growth impact? And the differential was two-tenths of 1%.”
Building on that, Solomon noted that the report was really meant to help the bank’s clients prepare for what might happen were a given candidate elected and certain policies implemented, not as a way of determining which policies would be best. He said, “I think our clients are trying to look at what’s going on from a policy perspective and make judgments. I think this blew up into something that’s bigger than what it was intended to be.”
Watch Mr. Solomon’s comments to CNBC about Kamala Harris’s debate claims about her planned economic policies and Trump’s economic plans here:
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