The economy is still the number one concern of Americans.

There are other issues, of course: the army of illegal aliens invading our southern border; woke activists brainwashing our nation’s youth with a twisted trans agenda; working to “transition” children without their parents’ knowledge, much less permission; a two-tiered system of justice targeting normal citizens, including those exercising their legal right to peacefully protest things they find unethical (e.g., abortion); and a weaponized justice system that is waging lawfare against the Republican candidate for president.

But the economy is still the number one issue and the Achilles heel of the Harris campaign. That means Donald Trump should hammer Harris on economics during their debate—if Harris doesn’t chicken out, which she should, being both a terrible speaker and economically inexperienced (if not completely illiterate). And this time she won’t have liar-liar-pants-on-fire Tim Walz to distract viewers when she fumbles the ball.

Harris’s entire experience in the private sector consisted of two years at a law firm just after graduating law school—which means she really has no understanding at all of how business and the economy work—and it shows.

When Dana Bash asked Harris about Bidenomics—the administration’s disastrous economic policy that rocket-fueled inflation (Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass it)—the best justification Harris could come up with was that it had capped the annual cost of prescription drugs for seniors at $2,000 and (she claimed) had cut child poverty by more than 50 percent. Oooo! For that, Americans had to endure inflation of 9 percent, a four-decade high! I doubt the poor think they are better off.

Trump should beat that drum relentlessly.

Now Harris wants to give $25,000 to first-time home buyers. When sellers know a prospective buyer is a first-timer, they will raise their price so that they can capture some or all of that $25,000, artificially inflating home prices. The estimated cost of the program? $175 billion!

And where will the money come from? Either from the printing presses or higher taxes. Trump should make sure the listeners understand that.

Trump should give a short lesson on economics, primarily on inflation. Milton Friedman said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Trump has to put that into his own words. When the government prints money, as it did because of the Bidenomics legislation for which Harris cast the tie-breaking vote (yes, repeat it), we get inflation. It’s that simple.

And because of the inflation Harris caused, she has indicated she wants to control the price of groceries! But why stop at groceries? Why not regulate all prices? That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. The left-socialists are already regulating drug prices, which will result in a shortage of both drugs and, more ominously, of new discoveries. But Harris (and most current office-holding Democrat Socialists) will be retired from active politics by then.

And then there are the twin tax proposals of the Biden-Harris administration outlined in the State of the Union speech. On one hand, no one making $400,000 or less will have his taxes raised; on the other, corporations will be taxed more. Or so Biden said—actually, he just read his teleprompter without necessarily understanding what he was saying.

Ah, those greedy corporations! Such easy targets. Trump needs to remind all Americans who own stocks and union members who have pensions that Harris just can’t wait to tax them—the same way Joe Biden wanted to tax them.

Who owns those corporations? Actually, lots of Americans own them! Sixty-one percent of Americans have money in the stock market. Sixty-three percent of Americans making $40,000–99,999 have money in the stock market (as do even 29 percent of those making less than $40,000). Forty-nine percent of people of color own stock. And 66 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats own stock.

In all, 162 million Americans own stock. Trump should make it clear he is speaking to them, about them, and for them—and about the taxes that Kamala Harris will impose on them if she is elected president.

What do corporations do? They make and sell stuff. With luck and hard work, they make a profit. Then what? Then they pay their employees, buy more stuff so they can make more stuff, pay taxes, and then they distribute part of what’s left to the stockholders. If the government raises their taxes, they will still have to pay their employees (or lay them off) and still have to buy stuff, but there won’t be as much money left over to pay stockholders. That really is not complicated—though it’s been a stretch for Biden to comprehend. Harris either doesn’t understand it or is trying to fool the voters, or both.

Trump should make sure voters understand the scam that Harris is proposing because, with the economy still the number one issue, the key to winning the election is explaining the economic facts of life to voters and what Harris proposes to do to them.

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Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.