On Friday, Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, outlined a series of economic campaign proposals in a front of a few hundred supporters at a campaign stop at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Using the language of Wall Street, Harris promised if elected to build “what I call an ‘opportunity economy.’”

Speaking in front of banners that read “Opportunity Economy, Lowering your Costs” and a “New Way Forward,” Harris advanced virtually the same corporatist and nationalist agenda President Joe Biden had been campaigning on until recently, with more overt appeals to Wall Street.

Harris began her remarks by speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to ravage the planet, in the past tense. She admitted, “A loaf of bread costs 50 percent more today than it did before the pandemic. Ground beef is up almost 50 percent. Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades.”

While the working class struggles to survive a deadly pandemic in the face of rising food, healthcare and housing costs, the ultra-wealthy under Biden-Harris have never had it better. Data reported by Forbes and complied by inequality.org shows that between March 2020 and March 2024, the number of billionaires in the US increased from 614 to 737. The wealth controlled by these billionaires has nearly doubled in four years, from $2.947 trillion to $5.529 trillion, or a nearly 88 percent increase.

Harris promised to build on this “foundation” of “progress” and create “opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.” She did not once mention how she would pay for any of the proposals, nor did she raise the possibility of increasing taxes on the ultra-wealthy or corporations.

Instead, Harris declared, “I will focus on cutting needless bureaucracy and unnecessary regulatory red tape,” while “encouraging innovative technologies… and creating a stable business environment.” As part of a creating a “stable business environment” she promised to “work with labor and business to strengthen the American economy.”

In addition to promising to cut regulations and red tape for corporations, she outlined as series of limited proposals to combat exorbitant housing costs, healthcare, food prices, and inflation that have no chance of passing a divided Congress. Her dead-on-arrival proposals include an expanded $6,000 Child Tax Credit for middle and lower income families the first year they have a child and a $25,000 tax incentive for first-time home buyers.

These proposals are a smokescreen for the real polices of a Harris-Walz administration, which are centered on suppressing the class struggle via the trade union apparatus in order to secure profits for major corporations and national supply chains in preparation for World War III.

Like Biden, Harris is enlisting the trade union apparatus to carry out the ruling class agenda of enforcing US global hegemony, “As president, I will bring together labor with small businesses and major companies to invest in America, to create good jobs, achieve broad-based growth, and ensure that America continues to define the future and lead the world.”

In her comments, Harris used her background as a prosecutor to absurdly sell herself as a “fighter” for the “middle class” against the big corporations that own both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

“As attorney general I went after companies that artificially inflated prices,” Harris said. “Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations...We — I will fight to give money back to working- and middle-class Americans.”

The fact is, just as in the ongoing support for the genocide in Gaza and the war against Russia in Ukraine, the Harris administration will not mark a break from the pro-Wall Street and pro-war policies of Biden. She and the Democratic Party are agents of the ruling class. That is why the ruling class has showered her campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not only will Harris continue many of the same policies as Biden, she will do so with many of the same faces. On Monday, MSNBC reported that that Harris’s economic policy team “draws on Biden White House alums Brian Deese, Mike Pyle.”

Deese, MSNBC reported, has been a “key advisor and sounding board for Harris.” Pyle, the former “global chief investment strategist at Blackrock,” is “also working” with Harris.

As Biden’s director of national Economic Council, Deese oversaw the reopening of schools as soon as the Biden-Harris administration came into office. In the midst of one of the deadliest waves of the pandemic, the former BlackRock investment banker made explicit the policy of the financial oligarchy: schools must reopen so children can go back and get infected, while their parents go to work and make profits for corporations.

MSNBC also reported that Deanne Millision, currently a lobbyist for the Ford Motor Co. is “back in the fold” after leaving as Harris’s chief economic adviser last year. Long-time Democratic operative, including as director of the National Economic Council under both President Clinton and Obama, Gene Sperling, is also “advising” Harris on policy, the outlet reported.

Last year, Sperling was appointed by the Biden White House to oversee the Big Three auto company negotiations with the UAW that ended with massive sellout contracts that ensured thousands of layoffs.

There is nothing progressive or “pro-worker” about the economic agenda advanced by Harris and her Wall Street handlers. Behind the curtain, Harris is working closely with bankers, CEO’s, investors and trade union bureaucrats to suppress the class struggle and the growing demands from workers for increased wages and reductions in housing, healthcare and food costs.

The fight to secure good paying jobs, housing, and healthcare for all, not just “opportunities” to be exploited by corporations and duplicitous politicians, requires a break with all capitalist parties, the nationalist trade unions, and a turn to the methods of class struggle.