Kamala Harris unveils economic plans in Pittsburgh. Here’s why it matters in the race to win Pa.

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled some new economic proposals geared toward attracting the support of voters in struggling former industrial hubs during a speech at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

Harris pledged to enact tax credits to encourage steel production and investments in other traditional industries, double the number of trade apprenticeships within a year of her election, and reform permitting to increase American construction speed.

She did it all while rehashing the policies her campaign wants to make a staple of her candidacy: a federal ban on corporate price gouging, building more affordable housing, and expanding access to capital for entrepreneurs.

And the vice president got personal, contrasting her middle-class upbringing with former President Donald Trump, whose business career was initially forged with a loan from his wealthy father.

“No one who grows up in America’s greatest industrial or agricultural centers should be abandoned,” Harris said. “We don’t have to abandon a strength we’ve known to achieve a strength that we plan.”

This was Harris’ 14th visit this year to Pennsylvania, a swing state both candidates have dubbed all but necessary to win the presidency.

Trump gave a similar speech, geared particularly toward manufacturing, in Georgia on Tuesday. But Harris’ speech, given in the commonwealth, was of special significance to Pennsylvania.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from her Pittsburgh address.

Polling data has consistently shown that Trump leads with voters on economic issues, even as Harris narrows the gap compared to President Joe Biden.

From the very beginning of the roughly 40-minute speech, Harris drew a sharp line of delineation between her policies and Trump’s. Harris did it by getting personal, underscoring her middle-class roots.

“I still remember my mother sitting at that yellow Formica table … with a pile of bills in front of her, just trying to make sure that she paid them off by the end of the month,” Harris said early in the speech. “Everyday, millions of Americans are sitting around their own kitchen table and facing their own financial pressures.”

Harris framed her so-called opportunity economy under three pillars: lowering costs, bolstering entrepreneurship and small business, and manufacturing investment. In each pillar of her plan, Harris hammered Trump on his own policies and proposals while painting herself as the down-to-earth candidate.

When talking about health-care costs, Harris recounted taking care of her own mother, who was dying of cancer.

Discussing her plan for small businesses and entrepreneurs, Harris touted her intention to expand the small-business tax credit to $50,000, while saying Trump’s tax plan benefits the most wealthy. And Harris accused Trump of offshoring manufacturing jobs during his presidency.

An analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the left-leaning Keystone Research Center shows Pennsylvania lost 23,000 manufacturing jobs during the four-year period that Trump was president.

While pitching a new proposal to offer tax credits for traditional manufacturing companies, she touted the potential creation of “good union jobs in steel and iron.”

“I’ve always been, and will always be, a strong supporter of workers and unions,” Harris said.

Her comments come after a back-and-forth saga with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and its regional conferences, which represent 1.3 million truck drivers, warehouse and health-care workers, and other public employees like teachers nationwide.

The overarching organization chose not to endorse a candidate for president, while the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters, which represents 95,000 members, endorsed Harris despite survey data that suggested stronger member support for Trump. Trump counted the union’s non-endorsement as a win for his campaign.

While laying out her vision on bolstering the manufacturing sector, Harris appealed to union workers. She joked about trying to visit every International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall and remarked about the union’s “tough duty” apprenticeship programs, which she described as highly technical.

Harris again highlighted her goal to eliminate degree requirements for 500,000 federal government jobs, and to encourage private business to emphasize skills.

Presidents Trump and Joe Biden both took steps to strip degree requirements from federal government jobs.

Harris’ manufacturing policy was revealing in what it said as much as in what it avoided saying.

She touted an expansion of “clean energy innovation and manufacturing” while specifically pledging to create steel and iron jobs.

“We will invest in the industries that made Pittsburgh the Steel City,” Harris said, before proposing for the first time her tax credit for creation of steel and iron jobs.

Harris balanced her commitment to bolstering more familiar manufacturing industries with the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which helped fund clean energy ventures. Federal funding helped add 650 jobs to a nearby zinc battery plant, she said.

At the same time, she failed to mention fracking, a notable omission in the state that ranks No. 2 for natural gas production. Trump has repeatedly attacked Harris over her support for a ban in 2019, a position she has disavowed.

Harris concluded her remarks by talking about “the story of the Steel City” as one that invented the future of the U.S. economy, hearkening to the idea that the region could be at the forefront of the clean energy economy, while also pledging to add traditional manufacturing jobs.

She called Pittsburgh “[t]he city that helped build the middle class, birth America’s labor movement, and power the rise of American manufacturing.”