Trump focuses partly on economy as he returns to campaign trail in North Carolina

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump focused partly on the economy during a speech in North Carolina on Wednesday as his campaign works to reset his close fight against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump advocated mostly for broad reforms, though, while offering little in the way of specifics and he went off on familiar tangents, including hurling repeated insults at Harris.

“Now this is a little bit different day,” Trump said as he began. “We’re talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy. A lot of people are very devastated by what’s happened with inflation and all of the other things. So, we’re doing this as an intellectual speech. You’re all intellectuals today.”

Proposals he made included directing Cabinet secretaries and agencies to work to “defeat inflation,” getting rid of job regulations that he said were costing jobs, and highlighting his call for “no tax on tips” and eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits for seniors. He also repeated “drill, baby, drill” as his key solution to solving economic issues, accusing Democrats of using the environment to stop the oil and gas industry.

“Inflation is destroying our country. It’s destroying our families. We will target everything from car affordability to housing affordability to insurance costs to supply chain issues … to the price of prescription drugs, I will instruct my Cabinet that I expect results within the first 100 days, or much sooner than that,” Trump said.

The economy has been one of the Trump campaign’s central election issues this cycle — the former president often spending considerable time discussing inflation, gas prices and the job market. His speech on Wednesday — specifically his attacks on the Biden-Harris administration — included falsehoods as he painted a better situation of the U.S. economy during his administration over the current one.

Trump falsely claimed that when he left office the economy was surging when in fact the unemployment rate was at 6.4% in January 2021. Now, it’s much lower at 4.3%.

He also said inflation has never been as high as it was under President Joe Biden; however, the annual inflation rate peaked at 9% in June 2022 under Biden, and it reached 15% in April 1980. Now, it’s at 2.9%.

Attacking Harris, Trump branded her as a complainer and argued that the policies she’s currently advocating for shouldn’t be taken seriously because she would have already accomplished them as vice president.

“Kamala has declared that tackling inflation will be a day one priority … But day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. Why hasn’t she done it?” Trump said.

After Harris recently advocated for the same no tax on tips policy Trump had announced earlier in the summer, the Trump campaign called Harris “Copy Cat Kamala,” and Trump on stage said it was evidence that she would copy all of his economic policies.

“When Kamala lays out her fake economic plans this week, it will probably be a copy of my plan, because basically, that’s what she does,” he said ahead of Harris’s economic plan rollout set for Friday.

“She’s doing a plan. You know she’s going to announce it this week. Maybe she’s, she’s waiting for me to announce it so she can copy it,” he said.

“During what was billed as a speech about his economic vision, Donald Trump said he’s ‘not sure the economy is the most important topic’ – because when you’re running to slash taxes for rich donors and corporations it’s easy not to care about the working families and middle class Americans who get hurt as a result,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement shared with ABC News.

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