Washington — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to face off for the first time this week as Election Day quickly approaches — with the race upended since the last debate matchup between Trump and President Biden.
Hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the debate could be the only time Trump and Harris go head to head on the debate stage.
Tuesday’s debate follows weeks of back and forth over whether the matchup would occur — and under what terms. Though the president and former president agreed in May to participate in two presidential debates, one hosted by CNN in June and another hosted by ABC in September, the second debate was thrown into question once Mr. Biden left the race in July.
Trump suggested on multiple occasions that he would not participate at all, criticizing the network. But after Harris baited the former president, accusing him of “backpedaling” on the debate, Trump agreed to the Sept. 10 matchup, while proposing additional debates on Fox and NBC News. Harris only agreed to the ABC debate.
What we know about the debate structure so far
This combination photo shows former President Donald Trump at an event in New Jersey on Aug. 15, 2024, and Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in North Carolina on Aug. 16, 2024.
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AP
Tuesday’s 90-minute debate, which will be moderated by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, will take place without an audience. It’s also expected to feature two commercial breaks, when campaign staff will not be allowed to interact with the candidates, among other rules that mirror the rules at the CNN debate.
During the debate, the candidates will have two minutes to answer questions and for rebuttals, along with an extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses, ABC outlined. No props or pre-written notes are permitted onstage.
The candidates will have two minutes to deliver closing statements, and Trump will deliver the final statement after winning a coin toss, ABC said. There will be no opening statements.
Candidates’ microphones will only be live when it’s their turn to speak, an issue that the two sides have been at odds over for weeks. While the Harris campaign argued that both candidates’ microphones should be on throughout the debate, Trump said his campaign agreed to the same rules regarding microphones in place for the first presidential debate. The Harris campaign ultimately agreed to have the microphones muted when a candidate isn’t speaking, althoughthe campaign said a pool of reporters will be present and will be able to hear what a muted candidate may be trying to say.
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The Harris campaign wrote in a letter to ABC obtained by CBS News that the vice president “will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format,” while noting that the campaign accepted the terms so as not to “jeopardize the debate” from occurring.
How Donald Trump is preparing for the debate
Heading into the debate, both Trump and Harris highlighted their policy platforms on the campaign trail in battleground states throughout the country, where they remained locked in a close race with fewer than 60 days before Election Day. Trump campaigned in North Carolina and Wisconsin in recent days.
The former president has been reviewing policy positions with advisors in the lead up to the debate, sources familiar with the former president’s preparation told CBS News, though his preparations are characterized as somewhat informal and include speaking with voters and engaging with the media.
Trump told “Good Morning New Hampshire” last week that he’s “been preparing all my life for this debate.”
“So, you know, I do. I have meetings on it,” Trump added. “We talk about it, but there’s not a lot you can do.”
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How Kamala Harris is preparing for the debate
Harris traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Thursday to prepare for the presidential debate, according to campaign officials and advisers to the vice president. She is set to remain in the area until Tuesday’s debate.
The vice president and her team have used the time to go back to the drawing board on their debate strategy, a senior campaign official told CBS News, after the decision was made to keep candidates’ microphones muted during the debate when they aren’t speaking. While Harris had planned to pepper Trump with questions, her campaign has had to seek out a new approach, fearing that her ability to most effectively engage with the former president will be hampered by the microphone restrictions.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was involved in Harris’ debate preparations against former Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, praised Harris’ debate skills and intellect on Sunday, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that “she is a very focused and disciplined leader.” But he noted that “it will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate.”
“It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off,” Buttigieg said. “It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”
When and how to watch the presidential debate
The debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 10. CBS will have coverage beginning at 8 p.m. ET. Find your local CBS station here or tune into CBS News 24/7.
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Olivia Rinaldi,
Aaron Navarro,
Nidia Cavazos,
Melissa Quinn,
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Fin Gómez,
Weijia Jiang and
Ed O’Keefe
contributed to this report.
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Kaia Hubbard
Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Federal Reserve policymakers’ aims to curb inflation while maximising employment are “pulling them in diametrically different directions” as Donald Trump’s trade war upends the economic outlook, the head of Fidelity’s $2.3tn fixed income business has said.
Robin Foley told the Financial Times that the US central bank’s “inflation fighting is all well and good, but employment still remains to be seen”. She added that the central bank was in a “tough spot”.
Foley’s comments come as the Fed has this year paused a rate-cutting cycle that began in 2024 as Trump’s levies on big trading partners threaten to increase inflation and hit the jobs market.
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Recent economic reports have suggested the Fed has made progress in pushing inflation towards its 2 per cent target while unemployment has remained subdued. But surveys have shown Americans are growing increasingly worried about their employment prospects, while many companies have warned tariffs could lead to price increases.
Fed chief Jay Powell said last month that “we may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension”.
Foley, who has worked at Boston-based Fidelity for 39 years and keeps a lower profile than many industry peers, noted that over the past year there had been “wildly volatile” shifts in expectations for interest rates among market participants. Trading in futures markets suggests investors expect the Fed to resume cutting borrowing costs in September, significantly later than forecasts at the start of the year.
Foley added that it appeared that the intense volatility in the US government bond market following Trump’s so-called “liberation day” announcement of sweeping tariffs on April 2 had been one reason why the president ultimately eased his stance on levies.
Despite the market tumult, Foley said Fidelity had been “overweight risk” against the main benchmarks in some of its fixed income strategies, “but not excessively so”.
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Almost a third of the asset manager’s flagship Total Bond Fund sat in corporate bonds as of March 31, relative to just a 25 per cent allocation within a fixed income index tracked by Bloomberg. The same flagship fund had less than a third of its holdings in US government debt, below the benchmark’s 46 per cent position.
With interest rates remaining elevated, “there’s very attractive yield in the market now”, said Foley, “even in the form of US Treasuries; that was not true for a very long time”.
“With that as a backdrop, you really need to be compensated to take on incremental credit risk,” she added.
Athletic retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods plans to buy Foot Locker, the seller of shoes in many a shopping mall, for about $2.4 billion.
Dick’s is the largest sports retail chain in the U.S. It’s been on strong financial footing, but it doesn’t have reach outside the country.
Foot Locker, for its part, has struggled as a mall-based chain, but it has a massive footprint of stores — about 2,400 across 20 countries. Dick’s says Foot Locker has a broad range of shoppers to bring to the chain.
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“The Foot Locker banner, which brings a more urban consumer and exposure to basketball and sneaker culture, can complement Dick’s customer who skews toward athletes and suburban families,” analyst Cristina Fernández of Telsey Advisory Group wrote in a note on Thursday.
Still, Dick’s investors did not welcome the news, given Foot Locker’s declining sales and waves of store closures. They sent the stock tumbling more than 14% on Thursday.
Ed Stack, executive chairman, appeared to address this in his statement, saying his company “long admired the cultural significance” built by Foot Locker.
“We believe there is meaningful opportunity for growth ahead,” Stack said. “Together, we will leverage the complementary strengths of both organizations to better serve the broad and evolving needs of global sports retail consumers.”
Combined, the two retailers will have to wade the choppy waters of new tariffs on imports, including footwear. And they’ll face the growing challenge of big brands trying to sell more shoes directly to shoppers themselves.
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“By joining forces with DICK’S, Foot Locker will be even better positioned to expand sneaker culture, elevate the omnichannel experience for our customers and brand partners, and enhance our position in the industry,” Foot Locker CEO Mary Dillon said in a statement.
Dick’s says it plans to keep Foot Locker as its own chain under its own name after the deal goes through in the second half of this year. Foot Locker shareholders and government regulators still need to approve it.
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Donald Trump has hit out at Apple’s plans to produce more iPhones in India as a way of avoiding US tariffs on Chinese-made goods, as he continues to push the tech group to manufacture its best-selling device in America.
Speaking in Qatar on the latest leg of his Middle East tour, the US president said he had “a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday” after the Apple chief executive confirmed last week that Indian factories would supply the “majority” of iPhones sold in the US in the coming months.
The Financial Times previously reported that Apple planned to source from India all of the more than 60mn iPhones sold annually in the US by the end of next year.
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Trump criticised that idea on Thursday, saying he told Cook: “We are treating you really good, we put up with all the plants you built in China for years. We are not interested in you building in India.”
He claimed that Apple would be “upping their production in the United States” following the conversation. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s comments are the latest sign of a cooling in the president’s relationship with Apple, one of America’s most valuable companies.
Speaking at an event in Riyadh this week after announcing a multibillion-dollar deal to sell hundreds of thousands of Nvidia processors to a new Saudi artificial intelligence project, Trump lavished praise on the chipmaker’s chief Jensen Huang from the stage, saying: “Tim Cook isn’t here but you are.”
Apple in February pledged to spend $500bn in the US during Trump’s four years in office, including producing chips and servers for AI.
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But the company faces huge challenges in replicating its vast Chinese supply chain and production facilities in the US, which rely on a skilled high-tech manufacturing workforce that is now overwhelmingly concentrated in Asia.
Analysts estimate it would cost tens of billions of dollars and take years for Apple to increase iPhone manufacturing in the US, where it at present makes only a very limited number of products.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said last month that Cook had told him the US would need “robotic arms” to replicate the “scale and precision” of iPhone manufacturing in China.
“He’s going to build it here,” Lutnick told CNBC. “And Americans are going to be the technicians who drive those factories. They’re not going to be the ones screwing it in.”
Lutnick added that his previous comments that an “army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing is going to come to America” had been taken out of context.
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“Americans are going to work in factories just like this on great, high-paying jobs,” he added.
