Trump floats manufacturing ambassador, while his Deere tariff threat draws flak from Mark Cuban

By Victor Reklaitis

Harris looks poised to offer her own proposals for boosting U.S. manufacturing in a speech Wednesday

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday offered promises to reverse offshoring by U.S. manufacturers, while Democratic rival Kamala Harris's campaign deployed prominent supporter Mark Cuban to attack the former president's economic proposals.

"I will appoint a manufacturing ambassador whose sole task - and it will be a great one - will be to go around the world and convince major manufacturers to pack up and move back to America, where they want to be," Trump said in a campaign speech in Savannah, Ga.

The former president pledged his administration would "take other countries' jobs" because he'll provide big companies that agree to make their products in the U.S. with low taxes, low energy costs and limited regulations. He made references to his proposal earlier this month to lower the corporate tax rate to 15% only for companies that make their products in the U.S.

"If you don't make your product here, then you will have to pay a tariff, a very substantial tariff, when you send your product into the United States," Trump said.

His speech in Georgia came a day after he threatened John Deere (DE) with a 200% tariff if the iconic manufacturer follows through on a plan to move production of certain products to Mexico.

Ahead of Trump's speech, the Harris campaign held a call for reporters with Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur who has been outspoken about his support for Harris.

Cuban attacked Trump for saying "things off the top of his head that tend to often be ridiculous, if not insane," adding that the tariff threat for Deere was an example of that given that the farming-equipment maker is operating under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade that Trump championed while in office.

"Didn't he propose and sign the USMCA?" Cuban said. The entrepreneur said the levies on Deere would lead to the company's destruction, and he described Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs of 10% to 20% as "insanity."

"We all know that that's inflationary, but he seems to think that that's a tax on a foreign nation," Cuban said.

Harris looks poised to offer her own proposals for boosting domestic manufacturing in a speech Wednesday in Pennsylvania. She's expected to call for new federal incentives for manufacturing in an address in Pittsburgh, according to a Washington Post report, citing unnamed sources.

If elected to a second term, Trump and his team would have considerable statutory authority to raise tariffs, according to James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.

Trump, while in office, made use of Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which empowers presidents to raise tariffs on imports that threaten U.S. national security, Lindsay noted in a blog post last week.

Lindsay said Trump also could turn to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which lets presidents retaliate against unfair foreign trade practices, or rely on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which authorizes presidents to regulate imports in the face of an unusual threat from outside the U.S. In addition, there's Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which authorizes presidents to impose tariffs on countries that discriminate against American products.

With six weeks to go until Election Day, Harris and Trump are both focused on campaigning in the battleground states that look likely to decide the White House race.

As of Tuesday, Trump has a slight overall advantage over Harris in those states, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls for the top swing states. He has an edge of 2.1 points in Georgia, though RCP's average of betting markets was giving Harris a 52% chance of victory as of Tuesday, while Trump was at 46%.

-Victor Reklaitis

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09-24-24 1540ET

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