The first weeks of power by President Donald Trump brought a wave of changes Funding freezes And price to one Repression of diversity efforts. While the courts have interrupted some of them, small businesses face Higher cost,, steep interest rate And more cautious consumers Share a similar message: it doesn’t help.
David Funk said he was amazed when the US Department of Agriculture rejected his $ 65,000 bill for the work that his business had finished since October.
Founder of Zero Emissions Northwest, a Spokane council, based in Washington, Funk links farmers to federal subsidies to subsidize equipment purchases and energy bills. A week after his denial of invoice, the agency representatives confirmed that it was because of the Order of “liberation of American energy”which has interrupted numerous projects funded by the law on the reduction of inflation.
“What this involves lost jobs, canceled projects and more lost jobs,” said Funk, who knew about his three employees about two weeks ago. Many of its customers are now stuck with equipment that they cannot finance for themselves. “It is shocking for some of them who voted for Trump to realize that it could impact them directly,” he added.
Weeks after the management and budget office canceled THE Balayage steering wheel on subsidies and loans He had published a few days earlier, Shaundell Newsome, founder of Sunu Marketing in Las Vegas, said that his agency’s internships could still be on blocking. The program, with a space for four trainees per year, is maintained by a subsidy from the Labor Department.
“There is a ton of confusion on what is real and what is not real,” he said about federal directives. “If we do not have these dollars to compensate for the training now, we must make a commercial decision.”
Newsome is still planning to do its next hiring in March, after the agency that pays the funds said it was on the right track to reach it on time. But he is concerned about financing the rest of the year, including a summer program for high school students.
Funk shared this feeling of urgency. “Not being paid due to a canceled contract and not being paid due to a suspended contract has the same result: we are not paid,” he said.
While small businesses remain largely optimistic about the coming months, the last survey of the National Federation of Independent Businesses also revealed that members ” Uncertainty has reached its third highest level recorded. Many retrosition plans have declared investing in their business, distrusting to type cash reserves if the economic conditions deteriorate.
Not being paid due to a contract canceled and not being paid due to a suspended contract has the same result: we are not paid.
David Funk, founder of Zero Emissions Northwest
In the meantime, managers of Large technological companies have been Courting personally THE the president’s favorAnd there are signs of The leaders warm up An administration promising deeper tax reductions and deregulation. But the nation 33 million small businesseswhich employ almost half of the American workforce and represent more than 43% of economic production, generally have less Marge to adapt For federal politics swings, lawyers say.
“We want to see more parity,” said Richard Trent, executive director of Main Street Alliance, a coalition of more than 30,000 small businesses. Trent criticized the “oligarchic acolytes” which, according to him, seemed to be in Trump’s “inner circle” and called for a “more nuanced conversation where everyone is included”.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comments.
Trump’s friendly reputation was one of the main factors that helped return it to the White House. While the United States was on average 443,302 monthly commercial applications During the first three years of the Biden administration when the economy recovered from COVID-19, against 282,362 during the equivalent period of Trump’s first mandate, many entrepreneurs recall the previous period of the current president favorably. The NFIB optimism index climbed at the time, supported in part by Trump’s tax cuts, and interest rates and inflation have both remained low until the blow Pandemic.
However, some owners of small businesses are now taking measures to isolate themselves from the potential negative impacts of the recent efforts of the White House – including those that remain in limbo – before waiting to see how everything is shaking.
Shortly after the elections, Béatrice Barba told NBC News She sought to buy $ 200,000 from her regular inventory before Trump’s promised price. The cups she sells at Tabor Place, her range of electronic commerce from the San Francisco Bay region, are counting on a durable borosilicate glass from a Chinese manufacturer.
But in recent weeks, Barba has chosen to play on less with a high intensity of money. It has reduced the order to $ 100,000 to prevent the products from being seated for too long, and although some of its other items must be reappropriate – at an expected cost of $ 50,000 – it is currently holding. Barba said she suspected The 10% of Trump’s additional rates on China could change or disappear in commercial negotiations.
“It’s an additional $ 5,000. I don’t want to have to spend this, ”she said. “Ten percent is a lot. There is no business, retail or otherwise, which would not be obliged to transmit this margin to their customers. »»
Barba said the administration could help small businesses directly, for example by offering loans to build more American factories so that companies like hers can count less on components produced abroad. She would also like to see price exemptions for employers with less than 50 people.
Trump’s full effects of economic policies remain to be seen. In a note to customers this month, JPMorgan analysts asked the question: “Is it an administration adapted to businesses?”
They highlighted the potential economic trail created by sudden and radical changes to American politics, including mass deportations that the White House seeks to increase. The impact of movements like these could be enlarged “by a tightening of the labor markets which forces the softening of the Fed,” they said, which explains the risk that more uncertainty can delay interest rates drops.
Longer steep borrowing costs persist, the more the main street entrepreneurs could undergo disproportionate pressure, said Joe Seydl, senior market economist at JP Morgan Private Bank.
“Small businesses tend to be more leverage than large companies,” he said. “They tend to borrow more at the short end of the yield curve, rather than at the end, and they tend to have much less cash funds.”
Corrine Hendrickson, owner of a daycare center in New Glarus, Wisconsin, said that she had “an additional concern because I do not have access to capital”. She began to rush on learning to freeze last month, not knowing if she could support her business without the daycare and development subsidy that subsidizes care for a number of her customers.
“(A parent) saw the news and feared not obtaining funding, and did not know how they would pay me next month and what it would mean. Would I expel it? She said.
Hendrickson said the subsidies resumed on February 1, shortly after the White House has lifted its financing frost after a court decision that interrupted him. But she looks nervously Republicans pursue deep expenditure cuts To adapt to Trump’s agenda, with a proposal calling for potential cuts to the additional nutrition aid program that helps finance healthy meals that Hendricks provides.
She also fears that childcare has suffered, which takes place by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, could be on blocking. Hours after her Confirmation as head of the department This week, HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shot on in a television interview.
An HHS representative said in an email that “there are no current reductions, breaks or disturbances to the childcare and childhood development.”
However, Hendrickson said she was wondering: “Do I continue to do this, or am I looking for a different job?” She added: “It really makes me nervous that I could maintain my program and my business, and the work of my life.”
CORRECTION: (February 16, 2025, 11:40 a.m. HE): A previous version of this article destroyed the family name of the owner of the small Corrine explorers. She is Corrine Hendrickson, not Hendricks.