The Economist Endorses ‘Underwhelming’ Kamala Harris, Hammering ‘Radical’ Trump For His ‘Dangerous’ Economic Policies

The editor in chief of The Economist joined CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday morning to discuss the publication’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris earlier in the day. Editor in Chief Zanny Beddoes told host Andrew Ross Sorkin that Donald Trump poses an unacceptable risk to both the U.S. and the global economy and that while Harris is “underwhelming,” Trump’s economics proposals are “disqualifying.”

“Welcome back to Squawk Box. The Economist magazine unveiling its endorsement in the 2024 presidential race for Vice President Kamala Harris this morning on the cover of the magazine. Showing an image of Donald Trump and it asks, quote, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’” began Ross Sorkin, adding:

Thank you so much for joining us this morning. There’s been a lot of controversy, as you know, even over the past week about publications deciding one way or the other to endorse or in this case, maybe not endorse a particular candidate. Walk us through your thinking about why you made this decision and have you frequently in the past, has the magazine endorsed candidates?

“Yes, it absolutely has. We’ve endorsed a U.S. president since 1980, and we endorse in elections around the world, certainly the U.K. elections, French election, the Indian election. So this is nothing new for us,’ Beddoes replied, adding:

And Andrew, as you know, we are a newspaper. We call ourselves a newspaper. We look like a magazine, but we call ourselves a newspaper that is known for its authoritative, rigorous, fact-based, fair-minded analysis, but also for its world view, for its opinions. We were founded in 1843 to champion traditional English liberal principles. That’s free markets, individual rights, the rule of law, all those kind of things.

And we have a view of the world. We are not ashamed about that. And we have editorials every week advising politicians around the world on what to do in certain things. And so it would be weird for us not to put that together and offer our assessment of a candidate and what a voter might do in a particular election. And this time around, what we decided to do was to really make our argument for our many readers.

And we have many readers who I think are going to vote for Donald Trump. We have Republican readers and Democrat readers, and we wanted to make the case that we think the risks posed by Donald Trump, a second term for Donald Trump, are unacceptably high, both for the US and for the world. And let me explain that, because I think many people think the case against President Trump is wildly overblown. And if you look back at the first Trump presidency, it’s true. There was a lot of drama, there was a lot of– but actually there was some quite good policies.

And as everyone knows, the economy was buoyant. And so I think there are a lot of people who are who think, well, it’s going to be okay because it’ll be like that again. And what I worry about is the tail risk, the tail risk of a Trump presidency, which is simply not there with Harris, Kamala Harris is an underwhelming candidate. This is not a strong endorsement for Vice President Harris. She is, however, unlikely to be a catastrophic president. I think she may be underwhelming.

I hope we’re surprised on the upside if she wins, but I don’t think she has the tail risk that Donald Trump has. And I think that tail risk is in sort of three big areas. Firstly, his policies are a lot more radical than they were in 2016. If you look at what he’s promising to do economically, 20% tariffs across the board, he talks about using the tariffs as a substitute for the income tax, 200% tariffs he’s talked about on certain countries.

This is for a free trade magazine, frankly, you know, disqualifying in itself. And the consequences, as you know, for the world economy if he enacted much of that would be really dangerous. Secondly, his proposals to deport. I just got to the end of it, his proposals to deport huge numbers of undocumented migrants. These are people with jobs. It’s a huge supply shock to the US economy. And thirdly, his tax cuts, he’s offering new tax cuts pretty much every day. Put that together. The economic risk, I think, is really big. And then there are two other I’ll get to in a second.

Ross Sorkin pivoted, “I actually want to ask a different question, which is your magazine is owned by a number of business leaders, including the family that owns Fiat, which also owns Chrysler. Jeeps are part of the Americana. Some people would even say parts of red states and blue states. And also, did you get any influence outside influence about this decision or anybody saying maybe you shouldn’t endorse somebody this year?”

“Zero. And let me just make this very clear. We are really unusual. We are commercially independent in the sense that we do not have a single majority shareholder. A single biggest shareholder is a minority shareholder. We’re privately held. And secondly, we have total editorial independence,” Beddoes replied, differentiating her publication from the likes of the LA Times and Washington Post whose billionaire owners scuttled endorsements of Harris.

“I’m actually technically hired by an independent board of trustees, which is a self-perpetuating group of four people. They’re the only people who could fire me. Nobody, I’ve had no conversations with anybody on the board, nobody about this. This is a decision made by us, ultimately by me. And the way we do it is we have. Yeah. Can I just say this because it’s really unusual in the U.S. context. We collect all of our journalists. We had like 150 people in the room last week when we discussed this. I asked somebody to make the case for President Trump, somebody to make the best case for Vice President Harris And then we had a discussion. And then, in the end, I take responsibility for what we write. But it is genuinely our view. This is totally independent. There’s no contradiction between an endorsement and being independent,” Beddoes concluded.

Watch the clip above via CNBC.