President Trump, in what was billed as a major address on his economic program, unveiled on Wednesday what will likely be one of the strongest attack lines on Vice President Harris, who is promising to focus on bringing prices down at the start of her potential presidency: “You can do it now,” he says. 

Appearing in a packed theater at a famously liberal western North Carolina enclave, Asheville, Trump said that as president he would be deregulating energy projects, maintaining his 2017 tax cuts, and asking his Cabinet to take a “whole of government approach” to improving America’s cost of living. 

Ms. Harris, he says, won’t do such a thing, given that she is the sitting vice president and hasn’t done so yet. He decried the “Harris price hikes” that have hit Americans’ wallets, calling her soon-to-be unveiled economic proposals “fantasies.”

“She thinks she’s going to bring down prices. Why didn’t you do it? You’ve been there three-and-a-half years. You can do it now,” Trump said of his new opponent. 

He stood in front of a large poster that said “no tax on tips” and “no tax on social security” — two promises he has made in recent weeks to try to win over working class voters and seniors. Ms. Harris, shortly after, announced she would push for the same federal tax cut on tips. 

Ms. Harris’s team announced that she would be releasing an economic policy program in the coming days, though Trump isn’t sure it will be much of a break from the Biden administration’s agenda. He also cracked a joke about her copying his tip tax promise. 

“She’s waiting for me to announce it so she can copy it,” he said of Ms. Harris’s looming policy rollout. 

All of the Democrats’ economic plans are “straight out of Kamala’s San Francisco playbook,” Trump said, echoing the statements he made in an appearance on X Spaces on Monday with Elon Musk, where he called Ms. Harris a “radical left San Francisco liberal.”

“You don’t have to imagine what a Harris presidency would look like — you’re living through the misery right now,” he told the North Carolina crowd. 

His running mate, Senator Vance, made similar comments at a rally in Michigan on Wednesday, saying that the inflation numbers and recent weak jobs report point to an ailing economy whose problems are more structural than Democrats care to admit. 

“When they say that inflation is down, they mean from a baseline where groceries are already 30 percent more expensive than when Donald Trump was president,” Mr. Vance said in reaction to the inflation numbers posted Wednesday that showed inflation had cooled. “They’re not saying it’s coming down — they’re just saying it’s not going up as fast as it was three years ago. That is not a reputation or a record to brag on; that’s a record to be ashamed of.”

“Why are prices so high? It’s because Kamala Harris failed to do her job,” Mr. Vance said. 

During his economic speech, Trump did offer some more personal attacks on Ms. Harris and her running mate, Governor Walz. Specifically, Ms. Harris’s laugh and Mr. Walz’s decision to mandate that tampons be available in girls’ bathrooms in Minnesota were the former president’s targets. 

“What happened to her laugh? I haven’t heard that laugh in about a week. That’s why they keep her off the stage,” Trump said. “That’s why she’s disappeared. That’s the laugh of a crazy person.”