WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used a campaign visit to New Hampshire on Wednesday to propose expanding tax incentives for small businesses, a pro-entrepreneurship plan that could soften her earlier calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.

Describing small businesses as “the essential backbone of our entire economy,” Harris said she wants to expand tax incentives from $5,000 to $50,000 for startup expenses, with the goal of eventually encouraging small businesses to file 25 million applications over four years.

The speech is part of Harris’s effort to strengthen her position on economic policy with two months until the end of the election.

“You are not just business leaders. You are civic leaders,” Harris said. She added: “You are part of the glue and fabric that holds communities together.”

Harris spoke at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, outside Portsmouth, and met with co-founders Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier. Their brewery received support to open its current location through a small business loan and installed solar panels using federal programs promoted by the Biden administration, according to Harris’ campaign.

The campaign of Donald Trump, former president and current Republican Party candidate, dismissed Harris’s small business plan, noting that the vice president has promised to eliminate a package of tax cuts approved during his administration that are set to expire next year. Trump’s campaign said the cuts “allowed business owners to deduct up to 20% of qualified business income,” lowered taxes on new equipment purchases and took steps to strengthen small businesses relative to larger ones.

Before turning to the topic of small businesses, Harris addressed Wednesday’s school shooting in Georgia.

“It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, parents have to send their parents to school, worrying about whether their child is going to come home alive or not.”

She added: “We have to stop this. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Harris’ visit to New Hampshire is a rare departure for the candidate, who spends most of her time in the Midwest and Sun Belt states, which play key roles in the November election.

Since President Joe Biden dropped out of his reelection bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president has focused on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which have been focal points of successful Democratic campaigns. She has also frequently visited Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, which Biden narrowly won in 2020, as well as North Carolina, which she hopes to flip from Trump.

Wednesday’s stop comes after Harris marked Labor Day with rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh on Monday, and before she returns to Pittsburgh on Thursday — her 10th visit to Pennsylvania in 2024.

Trump has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% — a departure from Biden, who suggested setting the corporate tax rate at 28% in his March budget proposal. Harris has released relatively few major policy proposals in the roughly six weeks since taking office in the Democratic primary, but she has not suggested she plans to significantly depart from his administration’s tax policies.

The small business plan Harris is laying out has many features the business community wants to see. But it contrasts with another proposal Harris unveiled last month, in which she promised to help fight inflation by working to combat “price gouging” by food manufacturers, which she suggests has unnecessarily raised prices at grocery stores.

Harris built her campaign around calls to grow and strengthen America’s middle class — and suggested that wealthy Americans and large corporations should “pay their fair share” of higher taxes.

Both candidates are using the week before the debate to sharpen their economic messages about who could do more for the middle class. Trump will deliver a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.

Biden, who built his campaign around promoting the middle class, won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, but Trump came much closer to winning against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Harris’ campaign says it has 17 field offices working in partnership with the state Democratic Party across New Hampshire, while Trump’s campaign has one office.

Some Democrats in the state were angry that Biden ordered the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to vote in the party’s presidential primary this year — replacing a caucus in Iowa and a first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire that had been held for more than a century.

Still, New Hampshire pressed ahead with an unsanctioned primary. Although Biden neither campaigned in it nor appeared on the ballot, he still won easily via write-in.

Trump seized on the change in the primary calendar by posting on his social media account that Harris “sees problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because they disrespected her during the primary and never showed up.”

“Additionally, New Hampshire’s cost of living is sky high, energy bills are among the highest in the nation, and its housing market is the most unaffordable in history,” the former president wrote. “I have protected New Hampshire’s First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will.”

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This version of the story has been corrected to reflect that Harris is returning to Pittsburgh on Thursday, not Friday.