Economic breakthrough

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown. I'm Steff Chávez, the FT's Washington reporter.

Today let’s talk about:

• Harris convincing voters on the economy
• Trump’s fundraising sweep through oil country
• What will it take to win Wisconsin?

Donald Trump has painted an extremely bleak picture of the US economy for voters, and one of Kamala Harris’s biggest tasks in the last stretch of the election is to show it in a different light.

With voters fixated on inflation, accomplishing that will be hard, conceded Edward Montgomery, a Democrat and ex-chief economist at the US labour department.

“Here’s the problem: inflation is the rate of increase, and [that] has slowed, but the public’s focus is on the absolute price,” he told the Financial Times’ Colby Smith. “It takes a lot for the price level to come down. That would be a recession and deflation, and it’s not quite clear you really want that.”

Without the excess savings amassed during the Covid-19 pandemic, “people don’t feel as secure now” and “they know that they are consuming past their means”, said Paul Isley, an economics professor at Grand Valley State University.

But despite these hurdles, she seems to be breaking through to some voters as they start to feel better about the economy. . . . Register for the FT to keep reading the newsletter for free.