Imagine if the presidential debate on Tuesday between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was about Minnesota.

The 49 other states? The rest of the world? Pfft!

Minnesotans may just be 6 million out of 330 million Americans, but our controversies and challenges overlap with many of the nation’s issues. So just talk about us!

Here are nine questions about Minnesota’s economy that would illuminate the way Trump and Harris think about the presidency and U.S. as a whole:

For parts of 2022 and 2023, the U.S. saw record numbers of people crossing its southern border, most of them without permission. And yet, Minnesota and about 15 other states still have fewer people in their workforce today than before the pandemic shutdowns in early 2020. As I wrote last week, population leveling and decline is a challenge for many developed nations.

While the U.S. welcomes immigrants in higher numbers than other countries, our overall population is now growing more slowly than ever. With any luck, this question would lead the candidates to express their thoughts not just about immigration but the nation’s slowing population growth overall.

In an insightful report published last week, the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence described how state government in Minnesota over the last decade became more dependent on federal tax dollars than Minnesotans realize. The state will get $43 billion from the federal government during the current 2024-25 biennium, or 36% of available resources. That’s more than double the $20.3 billion of 10 years ago, when it represented 29% of available resources.

Wisely, the state doesn’t put these funds toward its general budget, which ballooned 37% in this current biennium. And yet, if those federal funds are cut by a Harris or Trump administration, state lawmakers would no doubt seek to replace them with money used in the general budget. Neither Trump nor Harris say much about federal spending that’s also exploding upward. Any fiscal reckoning on the federal level would force one in our state government.

Another spending question, though from a different perspective. Hopefully, it would provoke the candidates to express whether they believe in any limits to federal spending.

Until late last week, Ramsey County proposed a “modern streetcar” line from Union Station in St. Paul to the airport that would rely heavily on federal money to cover its $2.1 billion cost. County leaders scrapped the project on Friday, citing public opposition. I believed there was no need for it in a city that’s losing population and shut down real estate development by imposing rent control. An express bus line would cost much less.

Both candidates talk about the nation’s housing shortage, which is harming millions of Americans and is acute in Minnesota. Trump blames the surge of immigrants for it and says he won’t let federal or state laws take away the rights of communities to decide how much housing to build. Harris says she wants to build 3 million new homes in the U.S. over the next four years, but it’s unclear how that can be done from a federal level. Minnesota lawmakers balked this spring at forcing cities and towns to remove zoning restrictions to spur more housing.

Harris and Trump, bowing to the wishes of the United Steelworkers, oppose Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel, saying they want the company to remain American-owned. It’s an unjustifiable expression of nationalism and a slap to free market principles.

It will likely lead to the purchase of U.S. Steel by Cleveland-Cliffs, which creates a tradeoff neither candidate mentions. That company would get an effective monopoly over key portions of the American steel industry and over mining employment on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Unless...

This is another economic tradeoff question, and something Minnesotans have argued for years. Several companies want to mine for copper and nickel near the range communities of Babbitt, Ely and Hoyt Lakes, all close to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

It started out as the mining-versus-tourism battle that’s raged in northeast Minnesota for generations. The clean energy transition complicated things. Environmentalists are having their priorities tested since solar panels, EV batteries and other products need copper and nickel. The likely concentration of Iron Range mining by Cleveland-Cliffs is a new wrinkle, raising the prospect that copper-nickel mining would assure wage competition there.

I expect both candidates would answer “no” as politicians have long bowed to farmers’ demands to promote corn-based ethanol. And yet, the clean energy movement is spurring a new look at its environmental impact and costs. This question would test how much Trump and Harris are captured by business power of the past.

Minnesota’s largest company by revenue and market value and is the nation’s leading health insurer and provider of data services in health care. A data breach earlier this year showed, I believe, the company has become too big to fail.

The Justice Department reportedly opened an investigation of the company earlier this year, though details remain scant. Though they probably wouldn’t talk about UnitedHealth specifically, the responses would be interesting. Trump pursued more antitrust cases than previous Republican presidents. The Biden administration that has been even tougher on the nation’s biggest companies and, while Harris might do the same, she hasn’t talked about it.

OK, this entire Minnesota-only debate is now officially in la-la land, but hear me out. Minnesota’s state government has created a more progressive tax structure than the nation’s, with the state nearly wiping out collection on low-income earners. Meanwhile, more wealth generation in the U.S. is happening because of the financialization of the economy.

Michael Sandel, the Minnesota native and well-known political philosopher at Harvard, raised this question recently in a piece for the New York Times where he explored the resentment of working people and noted that income from labor is taxed at a higher rate than income from dividends and capital gains. This is a fundamental inequality that is becoming more apparent in slow-growing states like Minnesota. I think it’s a question presidential candidates will eventually face.

Though not on Tuesday.