AP- WASHINGTON  Ovt.5- One wants to raise taxes, the other to lower them. One will seek to deepen the economic war with China, the other to ease tensions. But neither of them will achieve much without the support of the United States (US) Congress.

The economic policy proposals of President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden offer dissimilar views on the world's largest economy ahead of the November 3 election.

Biden's agenda targets the poorest Americans and includes a number of measures that would imply an abrupt change from Trump's administration, with a return to the policies of Barack Obama, of whom he was vice president.

Trump, by contrast, offers what analysts lament as few details of his economic platform, save for his promise to restore a comparatively good economy and the employment record that Americans enjoyed until March, before the US pandemic. new coronavirus will end it all.

Social programs

"I would say that the Biden plan is really an expansion of existing social programs," said John Ricco, senior analyst for the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania.

"In contrast, the Trump plan, to the extent that such a plan exists, ... addresses the same themes the administration has pursued for the past four years.

How much each will achieve what they want will depend on who controls Congress, currently divided between a Senate in the hands of Republicans and a House of Representatives dominated by Democrats.

Polls show an advantage for Biden and several Democratic Senate hopefuls, so analysts are leaning, albeit cautiously, for an eventual victory for Biden and a majority of his party in the upper house.

"Democratic control of the Lower House, Senate, and White House would produce one of the biggest policy changes, but if Republicans keep the White House or Senate, we expect little new federal, fiscal, or other policies," he said. JP Morgan on a note.

Visions

Biden's economic platform is centered around the motto "rebuild better," promising to create jobs through infrastructure improvements and clean energy funded by $ 4.1 trillion in taxes on big business and the wealthy over the next decade.

Trump, meanwhile, promises to restore "the largest economy in history", as he describes the performance from the beginning of his term in 2017 until last March. After a decade of economic expansion, unemployment reached its lowest rate in 50 years.

Polls show voters are leaning toward Biden as the country battles the pandemic. But last Friday the campaign suffered a turnaround when Trump announced that he had been infected with Covid-19.

The platforms of both applicants appear to benefit different sectors, said Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros, economists at Moody's Analytics.

Biden's proposal targets the poor and the middle class, whose “tax burden will remain roughly the same as it is today, but will be major beneficiaries of increased public spending on education, health care, housing, and a plethora of other social programs. Zandi and Yaros wrote.

A new Trump presidency, meanwhile, would likely increase the tax cuts approved by Congress in 2017 and benefit "greatly higher-income households and businesses, while government spending will be reduced on healthcare and a variety of social programs ”, they added.

Political support

If Democrats gain control of the White House and Congress, Moody's predicts that full employment from before the pandemic could return in the second quarter of 2022. And if Republicans gain that control, it would only come early in the early 2000s. 2024.

But Moody's estimates that neither Trump nor Biden will most likely gain control of both powers, so full employment would return in 2023.

Meanwhile, the companies evaluate the different commercial approaches of both candidates and, in particular, the position towards China, a country with which Trump initiated a trade war.

More than 3,400 companies from all sectors, including heavyweights like Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Home Depot and Ralph Lauren, sued the Trump administration over tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States.

Biden could reverse that policy, but Ricco points out that only up to a point. "Both candidates envision a landscape with much more skepticism towards free trade," he said, although "the tools to get there are different."