Donald Trump is known as the outsider in the current race for the Presidency. It’s clear why such a status would be attractive, as more and more Americans lose faith with our political process. However, before he decided to dip his toes into politics, Trump was a businessman. It’s all he’s ever really been, unless you include his brief forays into wrestling in the WWE or acting in Home Alone 2.
This is also not the first time Trump has sought the Presidency. He attempted to run in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, but withdrew before any preliminary campaigns began. At the time, he claimed to be conservative fiscally, but leaned towards the progressive side on social matters like LGBTQ rights.
Since then, Trump has changed his rhetoric. Whether or not it’s actually how he feels is irrelevant at this point. What may have started as a publicity stunt has turned into our current Republican bid for the Presidency of the United States. How his politics would affect people is important, and how it affects small business is, too.
Trump’s Take on Business
One of Trump’s biggest draws is that he’s a businessman. He claims to know the struggle, and he does have some experience with failure. Four of his businesses have gone bankrupt, which isn’t a great track record. However, it’s also very common with entrepreneurs. Failed ideas and startups are on practically every small business owner’s resume. But Trump wasn’t really ever a small business owner.
His claim of a “small loan of a million dollars” from his father is rather infamous now. It may have been poorly spoken, but it does show what Trump considers “small” when he thinks of small business. He thinks of businesses that have money coming in and don’t have to pinch every penny to make it work. His inheritance of his father’s company meant that he never had to pinch pennies or stay overnight at the office to make sure someone was there during a snowstorm.
Basically, Trump has always run big businesses. He might be able to say the right things to get small business on his side, but it’s only on the surface. His policies may actually be fairly detrimental to small business, assuming he can even do half of what he’s claimed.
Business Breaks
One of the bigger problems small businesses would face with President Trump has to do with his stance on immigrants. Overall, he wants a huge number of people out of this country: Muslims, Mexicans and a halt to refugees from the Syrian war. It would affect small businesses. 41% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Immigrants help companies by bringing in a wider world-view.
But the real problem is that Trump simply isn’t familiar with small businesses. His record has shown that he works, time and again, for big business. He has a track record of bulldozing small business in order to help out his larger interests. It would be easy to see how he would be in favor of the recent Anheuser-Busch deal, which gives the larger companies over a 30% share of the global market, which is significantly higher than small business.
Microbreweries, the small business of the beer world, account for about 11% of the market share. This would be a pretty typical example of the kind of work Trump is used to doing. He works to benefit the big guys, and leaves the smaller ones to make do on their own.
Trump’s Take on Taxes
One thing most business owners, including Trump, can agree on is taxes. They’re incredibly complicated, and if you don’t document the right things and get audited, you can end up in big trouble. There’s no question that taxes are complicated, there are too many loopholes and it can feel like too much of your money is going to the government. That’s partially why Trump’s rhetoric about a flat tax are appealing to so many people. In Trump’s own words:
“No business of any size, from a Fortune 500 to a mom-and-pop shop to a freelancer living job-to-job, will pay more than 15 percent of their business income in taxes.”
This is a drop from the corporate tax of 35%, but freelancers and mom and pop shops aren’t corporations. Unfortunately, the numbers simply don’t back that theory up. The only people who would end up paying a smaller percentage of their income would be the very, very rich: people like Trump himself, in other words. Under the current system, people with less money pay a smaller percentage, while those with more pay a higher percentage.
According to a study done by the Congressional Budget Office, people pay 2-29% of their income. The people who are paying 2% would see a huge increase in their taxes, while those paying 29% would see a huge drop off. In reality, a flat tax only hurts the poor and makes the rich richer. There’s no middle ground there.
While Trump is the outsider for this campaign, that doesn’t mean he’s a good option. There is a myriad of problems with him, including what his impact would be on small business. When you vote, choose carefully. Washington needs a shake-up, not a nuclear disaster.