In a week, US voters will be heading to the polls to choose the president who will lead the country for the next four years.
But what does this mean for co-ops and their members? And what is the two candidates’ record on co-operative and credit union policies?
Kamala Harris
Current vice-president Kamala Harris, who, before joining the Senate, was the attorney general of California, is likely to continue some of the policies started by her and president Biden’s Administration, particularly around clean energy generation.
She is known to be a supporter of electric co-operatives and community development financial institutions. On a 2021 visit to New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, Harris praised electric co-ops for delivering affordable broadband internet access, comparing their current work to the initial co-op electrification efforts in the 1930s. She also pointed out that co-ops like New Hampshire need federal support to continue their work to expand broadband.
Another area in which Harris sees the potential of electric co-ops is clean energy. Earlier this year US electric co-ops were awarded $7.3bn (£5.65bn) for clean energy in rural communities. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Empowering Rural America (Era) programme is a $9.7bn (£7.51bn) fund, created exclusively for co-ops to develop clean energy projects in rural areas, and is part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
In 2023, Harris also met with members of Latino Community Credit Union (LCCU), one of the beneficiaries of the US Treasury Department’s $9bn (£6.96bn) Emergency Capital Investment Program (ECIP). She praised community lenders like LCCU for understanding the capacity of the community. “They understand the culture of the community, the mores of the community, what the community wants for itself,” she said at the time.
Harris and Waltz’s economic plan pledged to “work to lower household energy costs and create millions of new jobs while tackling the climate crisis”.
The plan also promises that the America Forward tax credits “will provide significant additional benefits to investments made in longstanding manufacturing, farming, and energy communities, especially to those who commit to retool or rebuild an existing facility.
Other pledges include fighting to raise the minimum wage, ending the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and disabled people, eliminating taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers, restoring the expanded Child Tax Credit and expanding it further to provide up to a $6,000 (£4,642) tax cut to families with newborn children and working to boost wages of care workers, and raising the corporate tax rate to 28% while keeping the same tax rate for moderate- and middle-income families.
Regarding immigration, Harris supports a bipartisan immigration and foreign aid bill that would tighten asylum rules and allow for partial border shutdowns if crossings rose above a certain threshold, something president Trump opposes. The Bill failed to attract Republican support in February.
Donald Trump
While in office, president Trump cut corporate and income tax, rolled back federal regulations on businesses and hundreds of environmental protections.
His replacement of president Obama’s Clean Power Plan enabled coal plants to continue operating longer, a move supported by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) at the time.
He also promoted deregulation within the financial services sector, signing into law the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, which reversed some restrictions imposed under the Dodd-Frank Act post-2008.
His pledges ahead of the election – including imposing higher tax on imports – could push up prices, with new 10-20% tariffs on most foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.
President Trump’s policy priorities are highlighted in the Republican Party’s 2024 platform, which proposes several tax cuts, including reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products in the US and giving companies purchasing heavy machinery a tax credit. He also suggests enabling US citizens in states likely to be affected by hurricanes to write off the cost of purchasing home generators on their income taxes, something members of rural electric co-ops could benefit from.
Known for his hardline stance on immigration, president Trump intends to make it harder for undocumented migrants to stay in the USA, to complete the construction of the US-Mexico wall and increase enforcement. He also said he would sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented migrants, something guaranteed in the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment and likely to face legal challenges. Worker co-op members born outside the US and their families could be affected by such measures.
Sector views
Ahead of the elections, America’s Credit Unions, the apex representing credit unions nationwide, has launched an elections platform (creditunionsvote.com), which highlights pro-credit union candidates for office. And while America’s Credit Unions does not take a stance on the presidential race, it is encouraging members to vote. The apex estimates that 44% of all registered voters are credit union members.
Carrie Hunt from America’s Credit Unions told CU Today the apex was concerned Harris might continue with the Biden administration’s focus on junk fees. “Certainly, we support consumers…(but) we want to make sure that credit unions don’t get pulled into some of those issues as they have under the Biden administration,” she told the publication.
Other co-operative apexes have not expressed any views on the elections or their asks of the next administration.
