There is less than one month until the 2020 US Presidential Election on November 3rd. Not gonna lie – from the sidelines it looks like a circus, the chaos making it difficult to tell what’s real and what’s performance. To understand the election you need to understand the policies. But what what are Trump vs Biden policies?
We’ve done the reading to bring you the quick and dirty summary of Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s policies in five key areas: Energy & Environment, Health Care, Economy, Law & Order, and Education.
This is by no means a complete deep dive, but a consolidated, easy-to-read guide. It’s a start. Click through to any of the hyperlinked sources and do further reading of your own. It’s also worth remembering that this election is less about policy than almost any other – unlike Australian elections, Presidential campaigns are even more about the personality of the candidates (we don’t need to tell you that the 2020 election is almost entirely a referendum on Trump.) So policy promises are just that – promises, that may or may not be kept.
With that in mind… read on, or click on the headings to jump to that section.
Energy & Environment
Trump
In 2016 Trump campaigned on an ‘America-first Energy Plan’ – the USA is one of the biggest suppliers of oil and gas to the rest of the world, so Trump approaches environmental issues with this in mind. He delivered on it, including:
- Dismantling emissions-related restrictions on resource companies and the country, including the USA’s controversial withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and ditching Obama’s Clean Power Act
- Expanding the opportunity for energy companies in the States, by removing bans on gas exploration in previously untouched areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
- According to Brookings research, the Trump administration has taken 74 actions to weaken environmental protections
There have been a few bright spots on Trump’s environmental record, though:
- Signed off on the Great American Outdoors Act, which commits $3 billion per year to conservation and national parks
- Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally cleaned up some of the most toxic waste sites in the country
Biden
The environmental promise from camp Biden is more ambitious. He has promised a $2 trillion investment into clean energy over 4 years, with key features being:
- Upgrading 4 million buildings and 2 million homes to improve energy efficiency, creating unionised jobs in the process
- A goal to end the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by 2035, shifting to renewable sources
- Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050
- Constructing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations
Biden has also ensured the USA will immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement if he is elected.
While existing fracking projects will continue under Biden’s Democrats, he would not authorise ‘new fracking on public lands’.
*Editor’s Note: While the environment is of huge importance to Australian Zee Feed readers, keep in mind that it’s only relevant how each issue ranks with the American public. A Gallup poll from July 2020 found the most important issue for Americans was coronavirus/diseases (30%) – only 1% considered climate change to be the most important problem facing the USA.
Health Care
Health care policy is at the center of this US Election. A quick summary to catch you up: the health care system is made up of mostly private providers operating as businesses – people covered by either government-funded health insurance (Medicare or Medicaid for the elderly, disabled and very poor) or private health insurance can have these costs covered or subsidised. However, private health insurance is most commonly provided by employers as part of salaried job packages. If your employer doesn’t provide health insurance, and you can’t afford to pay for it yourself, it’s also very likely you won’t be able to pay for increasingly expensive health care costs.
Both candidates have very different approaches.
Trump
Criticism of Trump’s campaign says that, although he strongly disagrees with and has spent four years trying to dismantle Obama’s Affordable Care Act (aka ‘Obamacare’), he hasn’t put forward a comprehensive alternative.
Based on our research, that’s true. There really is nothing to tell you about Trump’s health care plan, except for the fact that if his party is successful in removing the ACA up to 20 million Americans could lose their health insurance.
Some crucial decisions about the ACA are due to be made in the Supreme Court next year, so rolled up in this policy area is Trump’s nomination to fill Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat. His choice, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, also opposes the ACA.
Biden
Biden is promising to not only reinstate elements of the ACA that the Trump government repealed, but expand health care coverage even further:
- Establishing a publicly-funded health insurance option, as an alternative to private insurers
- Capping the cost of private health insurance premiums for low and middle-class families, and implementing a tax credit to help with the cost of paying for private health (kind of similar to Australia’s Medicare levy surcharge, but in reverse)
- Preserving reproductive rights by making the historic Roe vs Wade ruling (a woman’s right to an abortion) a federal law. He also wants to restore funding to Planned Parenthood (which Planned Parenthood opted-out of due to controversial restrictions in 2019)
- Establishing restrictions on pharmaceutical companies to reduce the costs of prescription drugs – a policy that Trump also supports, but has not yet moved to implement in his first term
Economy
Trump and Biden are focusing their economic policies at different segments of the American population: high income vs middle-to-low income earners.
However when it comes to corporations, there are some similarities. Trump has essentially been building a trade war with China by increasing the duty fees companies have to pay to import products into America. Economic analyst John Ricco told Yahoo! Finance that Biden might not reverse those fees – suggesting both candidates could be aligned in this area.
Trump
Jobs & Wages
- His goal: to create 10 million new jobs and one million small businesses in the first 10 months of his second term
- Trump wants to spend $1 trillion over 10 years to repair infrastructure in an effort to create more jobs – experts say infrastructure spending is one of the most effective ways to do this
- A nationalistic, America First approach to both manufacturing and employment
- He supports an increase to the minimum wage, but would prefer to let the State governments handle it
Taxes
- Plans to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a further 5 years to apply until 2030. The Act reduced individual taxes in most income brackets and the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%
- Expanding Opportunity Zones, a program that gives tax incentives to investors funding projects in underserved communities
Biden
Jobs & Wages
- Biden’s policies are predicted to create 18 million jobs
- Infrastructure spending is also a core feature of Biden’s jobs platform, with $1.3 trillion in funding over 10 years
- The revenue from Biden’s tax plan will be funnelled back into making child care, housing and education more affordable which is expected to reduce the unemployment rate
Taxes
- Wants to raise the top individual and corporate tax bracket rates, but maintained there would be “no new taxes” for people making less than $400,000
- Biden’s tax proposal would raise $4 trillion in revenue over 10 years – the top 20% of income earners would carry 93% of this cost, the top 1% would carry 75%
Law & Order
The law and order platforms of both candidates are being heavily scrutinised in the 2020 campaign as the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed many of the issues into the global spotlight. Leaving aside what each candidate has to say about the other’s stance on this topic, let’s look at the policy promises.
Trump
Trump’s wants to protect and increase policing… but again, there is little information available to judge how that might be achieved. His campaign stance is:
- Increasing funding to Police Departments and hire more police officers
- More severe punishments for assaulting police officers
- Classifying drive-by shootings as domestic terror acts
- Ending the cashless bail system to keep alleged offenders in jail until trial
- Bringing “violent extremist groups like ANTIFA” to justice
Trump has also floated the idea of a program that partners up federal agencies with local police to help with gang, drug and gun-related cases.
Biden
Biden has said that his government will not defund police departments. Here’s what he is promising if he is successful in November:
- The Justice Department would start conducting deep investigations into misconduct in police departments again, called “pattern and practice probes” which was common during the Obama presidency
- Shifting from “incarceration to prevention” with a $20 billion competitive grant program available to programs working to prevent non-violent crimes
- Decriminalising cannabis, removing all prior cannabis use convictions from people’s records, and ending jail sentencing for drug-use-only charges (instead redirecting these cases to drug courts)
- Ending the cash bail system, removing jail sentences for failure to pay fines and fees, and eliminating the death penalty
Education
For both candidates the education policy puts a greater emphasis on schooling rather than college and university.
Trump
Trump’s key talking points in the education sector have been:
- Schooling choice – making private schools and charter schools (like Australia’s independent schools) more available to families by pushing for more funding and providing vouchers
- ‘Teaching American Exceptionalism’ – Trump believes that schools and colleges focus too much on the ‘negative’ aspects of America’s brutal past in history curriculums. Instead, he wants to mandate that history education focus on freedom, positivity and the great achievements of America.
Biden
Under Biden, the Democrats are promising to increase the federal education budget by $850 million over 10 years. With this money, they plan to:
- Triple funding for schools with a high percentage of low-income families
- Double the number of psychologists, councellors and associated health professionals working in and with schools
- Have special education completely funded by 2030
- Make the first two years of community college free
- Cancel student loan debt for low- and middle-income earners attending public colleges or private historically black colleges
Did you find this article helpful? If you love what we do, please consider supporting us by purchasing a copy of our book How to Win Every Argument. Prices from $9.99