WASHINGTON — Political contrasts between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are deepening as the general election campaign gets into full swing.
But what does the choice mean for ordinary voters and the economic and cultural issues that matter to them? A rematch between the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor may seem uninspiring to many voters, but the political stakes are enormous for tens of millions of Americans — and the world.
Here are seven big issues at stake in the 2024 election.
Abortion
The contrast: Biden favors federal abortion protection; Trump opposes them. Trump supported national abortion restrictions while president, but now downplays the need for a federal ban as Republicans are divided on the issue. Biden does not support federal limits.
Biden championed the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill to protect the right to abortion in all 50 states under federal law and prohibit medically unnecessary obstacles to accessing the procedure. He asked voters to send him a Democratic Congress that supported legal abortion to achieve this.
Trump boasted that he “broke Roe v. Wade” by choosing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled him, fulfilling a four-decade goal of the Republican Party. More recently, Trump has openly feared that the backlash could cost him and his party the election. Last week, Trump said the issue should be left to the states, a change from his support for national restrictions when he was president. His new stance has drawn resistance from GOP allies such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and anti-abortion rights advocates, who say he is wrong and that Republicans should not be deterred from their long-standing goal of enact some national limits on abortion.
Some Republicans downplay the prospects of passing federal abortion restrictions in Congress, even if they gain full control. Biden and his allies are telling voters to look to the Republican Party’s long history of defending federal restrictions and not its recent rhetoric.
Immigration
The contrast: Trump promised a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration and tougher executive actions; Biden is asking Congress to give him more tools to manage an overwhelmed border and create new legal pathways to immigrate to the US.
Trump called existing border laws an existential threat to the U.S., saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and bringing new “languages.” His campaign website says: “President Trump will end Biden’s border debacle. He will once again end the catch and release system, restore permanency in Mexico, and eliminate asylum fraud. In cooperative states, President Trump will deputize the National Guard and local authorities to assist in the rapid removal of illegal alien criminals and gang members.”
After having rescinded some of Trump’s policies, Biden has recently moved to support stricter immigration laws as the system remains overwhelmed. He championed a bipartisan bill to raise the bar for obtaining asylum, give the U.S. more resources to process asylum claims and turn away migrants who don’t qualify, and empower the president to temporarily close the border if migration levels reach certain factors. (Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate amid lobbying by Trump, who wants to use the border as an election issue.) Biden has also endorsed the bill. US Citizenship Lawwhich would grant a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally if they pass background checks and pay their taxes.
Fundamentally, Trump has aligned himself with forces that want less immigration into the country, while Biden has embraced the belief that immigrants make the US better.
Healthcare and Prescription Medications
The contrast: Biden wants to extend provisions of the Affordable Care Act and empower Medicare to negotiate more prescription drugs; Trump aggressively criticized the ACA but did not offer a health care plan.
Biden, who was vice president when the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, sees it as a cherished achievement to protect and strengthen. The law, also known as “Obamacare,” which extended coverage to 45 million people through subsidies, insurance mandates and an expansion of Medicaid, continues to face conservative opposition.
Separately, Biden touted a provision in his partisan Reducing Inflation Act that authorizes Medicare to negotiate lower prices for 10 prescription drugs. He said he want to boost that to 50 if he is re-elected, with a goal of saving $200 billion.
Trump spent his four years as president fighting unsuccessfully to repeal and unravel the law — through legislation and executive action and by endorsing lawsuits to eliminate it. In November, Trump called for a review of plans to “terminate” the ACA. He has recently sought to downplay this and insists he just wants to improve the law. But he didn’t offer health insurance. Many of his GOP allies in Congress still favor repealing or undoing the ACA, including a budget Republican Study Committee, which has about 80% of the House GOP conference as members, including Chairman Mike Johnson. , from Louisiana.
Taxes
The contrast: Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of next year and he has called for their extension; Biden has called for raising taxes on families earning more than $400,000 to fund several priorities.
A series of Trump tax cuts, which Republicans passed on a party-line basis in 2017, expire at the end of 2025. Congress and the election winner will decide what happens to them.
In a recent private speech to wealthy donors, Trump said his policies include “extending the Trump tax cuts” if elected, according to a Trump campaign official. This would preserve lower rates across the income spectrum, with greater benefits for higher earners.
Biden attacked this law as a gift to the richest Americans, promising to make “big corporations and the very rich finally pay their fair share.” He supported an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and said that “no one earning less than $400,000 will pay an additional penny in federal taxes.” Biden is also calling for a $3,600 per child tax cut for families, an average $800 tax cut for “frontline workers” and a 25% minimum tax for billionaires, according to a plan recently released campaign campaign.
The expiration of Trump’s tax cuts will restore the unlimited federal deduction for state and local taxes, which Republicans capped at $10,000 in the 2017 law. Republicans largely support preserving the cap, with some exceptions, while most Democrats want to raise it.
Judges and the Supreme Court
The contrast: His track record tells a clear story. Trump chose young conservative judges to serve on the federal bench, while Biden chose liberals with a focus on professional and personal diversity.
One of the clearest contrasts is the type of judges Trump and Biden would choose for lifetime appointments on the federal courts. A simple way for voters to think about this is whether they prefer new justices with the conservative views of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick for the Supreme Court, or with the liberal views of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the (so far only) Biden’s pick for high court. .
As president, Trump appointed young conservative judges who will serve for generations. Biden has focused on finding judges with diverse backgrounds and resumes, including more civil rights lawyers and public defenders.
Perhaps the biggest question is whether a Supreme Court vacancy will open in the next four years. The winner of the presidential election and the party that controls the Senate would fill it.
Replacement
The contrast: Trump is imposing a blanket 10% tariff on imports; The Biden White House opposes this, saying it would increase inflation.
Trump, long skeptical of US trade deals, proposed impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods if he returns to the White House. He recently told Fox News it could be 60% — or potentially “more than that” — on imports of Chinese goods.
Biden opposes this idea. In a memo over the weekend, the White House criticized the idea of “across-the-board tariffs that would increase taxes and prices by $1,500 per American family,” without naming Trump; referred to a I estimated by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, that Trump’s 10% tax on imports could cost the average American family $1,500 a year.
Biden has instead sought to boost domestic production with large federal investments in semiconductors and electric vehicles.
Foreign policy and NATO
The contrast: Biden favors aid to Ukraine, while Trump is skeptical of it; Biden supports NATO and a traditional view of American power, while Trump has criticized NATO and expressed some isolationist views.
The clearest example of the foreign policy differences between the two concerns the fate of Ukraine, which is running out of ammunition and says it needs US help to continue to contain Russia’s aggression. Biden is an ardent supporter of aid to Ukraine, while Trump has poured cold water on US aid to Ukraine and successfully pressured House Republicans to block it since they won the majority in January 2023.
And it points to a deeper divide: Biden is an outspoken supporter of the NATO alliance as a bulwark against adversaries like Russia and China and of preserving the post-World War II order. Trump has intensified his criticism of NATO and aligned himself with a growing isolationist wing in the US that wants to be less involved in global affairs. Trump recently said that as president he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever they want” with member countries that are “delinquent” in their debts.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
