Kamala Harris will be better for Wall Street investors because she will import more low-wage legal and illegal migrants from around the world, according to Goldman Sachs, a New York investment firm.
The choice was admitted in a September 3 report, titled “The Election and the Economy: Estimating Immigration, trade and Fiscal Effects”:
If Harris wins, we expect that net immigration will continue [at] 1.5mn [million] per year, somewhat above the pre-pandemic trend of 1mn [legal immigrants]. If Trump wins with divided government, we expect net immigration will fall to 1.25mn. If Republicans sweep, Congress could increase enforcement resources, and we expect net immigration would fall to 0.75mn.
The biggest short-term impact, says Goldman, would be caused by President Donald Trump’s support for tariffs to protect U.S. industry, jobs, and science.
However, the firm’s charts show that reduced migration would have the second biggest change, especially after January 2026. “We estimate that the contribution from immigration to labor force growth would be about 30,000 per month higher if Vice President Harris is elected than in the Republican sweep scenario,” the report said.
But Trump’s populist policies would only cost the nation about one-half of one percent of the total economy, the report noted:
We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse, resulting in a peak hit to GDP growth of-0.5pp [percentage points] in 2025 …that abates in 2026.
Government-delivered migrants boost the economy by serving as wage-cutting workers, rent-inflating renters, and government-funded consumers.
The federal “Extraction Migration” strategy provides a huge human stimulus for Wall Street’s investors in the U.S. consumer economy, even though it imposes huge costs on ordinary Americans and reduces the pressure on companies to invest in high-tech productivity and foreign trade.
Goldman Sachs has been very successful for its wealthy investors over the years, but it is also hated by populist critics on the left and right. “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere …. [and] is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” according to a 2010 article in Rolling Stone magazine.
The report does not explain why Goldman Sachs thinks migration will decline if Harris is in the Oval Office.
Her language suggests she will not reduce the huge inflow of legal, illegal, and quasi-legal migrants arranged by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief. She has also been supported by many wealthy California investors who gain from massive migration, and by many progressives who use immigration to forcibly diversify the nation’s populist culture.
Harris’s economic plan offers few strategies for growing the economy aside from more migration.
The report also seems to greatly understate the pre-election inflow allowed by Biden’s border chief, the Cuban-born Alejandro Mayorkas. In July, for example, Mayorkas allowed roughly 170,000 migrants through the southern border, at a rate of about 2 million people per year. That inflow is in addition to the legal inflow of 1 million, and the inflow of short-term workers, which includes about 500,000 blue-collar workers, and roughly 500,000 white-collar workers.
Since January 2021, Biden’s deputies have imported almost 10 million legal and illegal migrants. That huge inflow adds three migrants for every four American births during the same period.
Mayorkas is working hard to expand the inflow of foreign graduates, partly because the migrants are helping subordinate better-paid American professionals to the investors’ executives.
Trump has promised to help Americans by shutting down the supply of southern migrants, and by deporting some of the roughly 15 million illegals. But he has also made and withdrawn various claims to donors since 2015 about importing more white-collar workers.
Trump’s zigzags have helped keep vital support from wealthy donors but have also narrowed his polling advantage on immigration.
Trump has also promised to help young Americans by excluding illegal migrants from the U.S. housing market.
The Goldman Sachs report does not mention the productivity and income gains for Americans that emerge as employers lose access to extra cheap labor.