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Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy just got endorsed by almost 90 current and former top executives across corporate America, including high-profile CEOs and several longtime Democratic donors.
“Her election is the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy,” the leaders wrote in a letter shared with CNBC. “With Kamala Harris in the White House, the business community can be confident that it will have a President who wants American industries to thrive.”
The group includes a number of high-profile executives of public companies, including Snap Chairman Michael Lynton and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. Other signatories include Chris Larsen, who helped found the blockchain platform Ripple, and Box CEO Aaron Levie.
The majority of the letter’s signatories are former business executives, from former Blackstone CEO Tony James and Lazard CEO Peter Orszag to the many former heads of public companies. Executives who once led Pepsico, Merck, Starbucks, PayPal, and Ford all made the list.
A number of donors aligned with Harris — or the Democratic party more broadly —also signed the letter, including Laurene Powell Jobs, NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, former Walt Disney Studios chairman and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
Several of these people have already gone to bat for Harris in the almost two months since she became the defacto Democratic nominee. Cost Plus Drugs Co. founder and Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman — both of whom have signed another pledge to support Harris — are signatories, as is IAC Chairman Barry Diller.
“Kamala Harris is pro-business,” Cuban argued earlier this week. “This is Kamala Harris’ campaign, it’s not Joe Biden’s campaign,” later adding that “she’s going center 100%” on business.
Harris’ economic plan includes a push to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit, create a new tax credit that would give low-income or middle-income families with a newborn child $6,000, and slash taxes by up to $1,500 for low-income individuals. She has also pledged to take aim at high prescription drug prices, expensive grocery bills, and Wall Street’s home buying spree.
According to Goldman Sachs analysts, the best outcome of the 2024 presidential election, at least for the economy, would be a Harris win and a Democratic sweep of Congress. The worst scenarios occur when Former President Donald Trump gets back into office and implements tougher controls on immigration and high tariffs on imported goods, the analysts said.
Trump’s economic proposals would also increase the federal deficit by $5.8 trillion over the next decade, almost five times more than Harris’ proposals, which would add $1.2 trillion, according to recent studies from The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model.
