Main Street has been excited for the Donald Trump presidency. Optimism picked up on the back of Trump’s resounding election victory. They found an ally in the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, who recently echoed his previous small business support, saying, ‘Wall Street’s done great, Wall Street can continue doing well. But this administration is about Main Street.’
Small businesses and others even scored a major win when Bessent’s Treasury Department suspended enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act’s Beneficial Ownership Information reporting for U.S. citizens and entities, which had mostly been targeted at small businesses.
But recent policy shifts, including substantial tariffs that have directly impacted small businesses and the markets, are standing in massive opposition to a Main Street win.
While Trump and his advisors may be trying to play a long game here, small businesses, which have been brutalized by policy for the last five years, cannot withstand this chaos and blunt-force policy.
Five years ago, a policy assault on small businesses began. Many small businesses were closed in whole or in part, or otherwise impacted by state and local COVID-19 policies, while large businesses were left open and supported in the stock market by the Fed. The PPP program purportedly meant to help affected small businesses was poorly structured, meaning a whole lot of people received funding who should not have, and many of those small businesses that rightfully should have been paid via PPP did not receive enough.
Downstream effects, including labor force issues and supply chain disruptions on the back of COVID-19 policies beat down small business even more.
Then came the Biden administration, bringing historic inflation and an estimated $1.7 trillion in new regulatory costs to small businesses.
The effects from all of the above hurt small businesses disproportionally, because they do not have the scale to be able to absorb the costs and issues the way that larger businesses can. And everyone should care, because small businesses are close to half of the overall economy and more than 99% of all business entities.
