If you went into last night’s Presidential debate wondering what the candidates’ golf handicaps were, you would have been pleased with how informative it was. For the rest of us, there were a lot of generalizations and personal attacks that tell us absolutely nothing concrete about the future. However, some omissions from last night were very telling and there were some statistics given that we can examine. Both candidates were asked about the economy, specifically former President Trump was questioned on his proposed tariff increases and tax cuts and President Biden about his response to high prices for goods and services.

Former President Trump claimed that the tariffs imposed during his administration benefited the economy and were necessary because other countries, specifically China, were “ripping us off”. Now, we already know that those tariffs raised manufacturing costs and raised sticker prices as discussed in our articles from 2019 [1][2]. It was such an issue that President Biden vowed to repeal when he was on the campaign trail in 2020. However, President Biden never repealed those tariffs and actually increased them this year. Neither candidate was questioned about this inconsistency, and we can’t be sure why he left those tariffs in place. It is therefore unclear whether former President Trump’s proposed 10% tariff increase applies to those he already instituted or the ones that President Biden implemented this year. This is just one example of the lack of clarity we had from last night’s debate and one that will negatively affect inflation either way.

President Biden claimed that he will go after corporate greed to help reduce prices and restore consumer confidence. He did not outline specifics of his plan like when this would happen or how it would bring prices down. For former President Trump, he believes that tax cuts will help the economy and he claimed that they were the reason why business survived the pandemic. President Biden countered that they only rewarded the wealthy. The pandemic was an unprecedented situation and required multiple operational changes for every industry making it hard to place credit for survival on tax breaks or any other one factor outside of the incredible ingenuity of American businesses.

The lack of hard information gained at the debate may make some dismiss it entirely, yet that would be a costly mistake. Even if a company wants to stay out of politics, those politics will still affect your business. Everyone is going to feel the effects of last night’s debate and the coming election cycle. Both candidates have already released new campaign ads and we will be hearing soundbites from the debate for months to come. We will be bombarded with ads and statistics and all of it will affect marketing and sales. Consumers are already sick of hearing about the election, yet they can’t just sort out political ads from their emails or social media feeds. They will engage less with these platforms and tune it out entirely in some cases. Businesses will have to overcome this by pushing through and increasing their marketing instead of waiting around. The sooner the better, as things will become more difficult the closer we get to November. Last night did little to inspire consumer confidence and we can’t wait until the next debate for more clarity on each candidate’s policy going into 2025 and beyond.