Trump hosts small business owners at White House, touting business-friendly policies

By Morgan Sweeney
The Center Square

President Donald Trump enumerated a number of policies he said have created a favorable environment for small business growth while speaking to small business owners at the White House Monday.

Sunday marked the start of National Small Business Week, which honors the businesses that make up roughly 40% of all economic activity in the U.S., according to Trump.

“[As] a group of people added together, you’re essentially the most important factor business-wise in the whole country, and this country is leading the whole world,” Trump said. “I always say that small business is a giant business, because when you add up your whole department, that’s not a small business, that’s a really big business.”

The president highlighted policies advanced by his second-term signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act that have improved conditions for small businesses, according to Trump.

The bill made the small business deduction permanent, which allows eligible business owners to deduct up to 20% of qualifying business income from their taxable income. It also extended 100% bonus depreciation, enabling businesses to immediately deduct the full cost of qualifying investments — including equipment and machinery — from their taxable income. Both provisions were enacted under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 but were either set to expire or being phased out prior to the OBBBA’s passage.

The TCJA’s estate and gift tax exemption, which doubled what the exemption had been at the time, was extended and expanded through the OBBBA. Under the TCJA, the single filer exemption was $11.18 million and joint filers’ was $22.36 million. The OBBBA raised those exemptions to $15 million and $30 million, respectively. This allows children of small business owners who inherit their parents’ business to keep more of the estate.

“To ensure that you and your family can keep your businesses in the family, we virtually eliminated the unfair estate tax or death tax for farmers and for small businesses,” Trump said. “I hope everyone’s appreciative of it. Now, if you don’t like your children, it doesn’t mean anything, but if you do like to leave them to somebody that you love, then it’s a big deal for them.”

The president also spoke about the regulatory relief that has been a focus of his administration. Not long after starting his second term, Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to cut 10 regulations for every new one created. According to the administration, instead, an average of 129 regulations have been eliminated for each new regulation.

“Almost as important as the tax cuts, we’ve slashed a record number of job crushing regulations. That includes tremendous numbers of environmental regulations, which stopped your businesses… [and] if anything, they made the environment worse,” Trump said.

He also boasted of his administration’s tariff policies, which he said have in some cases, protected American small businesses from competition. As of early April, 56,000 U.S. importers had registered for tariff relief from the federal government, according to CBS News.