Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

ALFREDO ORTIZ: Into The Golden Age We Go

(Screen Capture/CSPAN)

The Trump economy is rocking and rolling.

Friday’s jobs numbers show employers are breathing a sigh of relief about the change of leadership in Washington. The unemployment rate fell, the labor force participation rate rose, and wages surged faster than inflation.

According to the jobs report’s household survey, the economy created more than two million jobs last month, the largest increase since the COVID recovery. (The survey’s annual population readjustment contributed to this figure.)

These strong job numbers track with Job Creators Network’s new poll of small business owners — the first Trump took office — showing that small business optimism has surged. Nearly three-quarters of respondents — a record high — say they expect their financial condition to improve in the next three months versus only about half who said the same before the election.

The economy is responding to Trump’s pro-small business actions, which you can be forgiven if you haven’t heard about with all the other news over the past couple of weeks.

Consider Trump’s executive order last week requiring at least ten existing regulations to be eliminated for every new regulation added. The order also requires the government to follow a rigorous regulatory cost analysis process that will protect Americans from burdensome rules.

As the White House noted, overregulation crushes small businesses, reduces consumer choice, boosts inflation and infringes on American liberty. What a refreshing change from the Biden administration and its $1.7 trillion in added regulatory costs.

The Trump administration has also stopped Democrats’ plans to hire tens of thousands of new Internal Revenue Service agents, who would have targeted approximately 600,000 more families and small businesses making less than $75,000 with audits.

Then there’s Trump’s order last month to defeat the cost-of-living crisis that disproportionately burdens small businesses. Trump’s national energy emergency declaration will reduce electricity and gas prices by boosting oil production and repealing the Biden Administration’s job-killing green energy mandates.

Trump also saved TikTok, which tens of millions of small businesses rely on to sell and promote.

But Trump can only do so much. Now it’s time for Congress to do its part by passing legislation to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent.

These tax cuts, set to expire at the end of the year, have been a lifeline for small businesses contending with the bad Biden economy. On Wednesday, new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed that making these tax cuts permanent — not just extending them — is the administration’s priority.

Our polling shows the dire effects of failure here. One-third of small businesses say they would cut back on expansion plans, and one in five say they would lay off employees if the TCJA isn’t extended.

Beyond making the TCJA permanent, it’s key that policymakers restore the immediate expensing that has phased out over the last few years. This provision empowers small businesses to write off investments, boosting their access to capital and incentivizing expansion, hiring, and economic growth

With tax certainty, deregulation, cheap energy and sound money, small businesses can lead the American economy and labor market into a new golden age. While the media obsesses over the latest palace intrigue, this is what ordinary folks around kitchen tables across the country actually care about.

Alfredo Ortiz is CEO of Job Creators Network, author of “The Real Race Revolutionaries,” and co-host of the Main Street Matters podcast. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.