A changing administration for small business

That long exhausting slog of an election season is over. OK then, let’s all take a collective deep breath and count slowly to 10. Feeling better?

The political events of this month have encouraged some, alarmed some and surprised many. A calming thought that levels me out when I’m wondering if this is all for real, is that life goes on, the stars come out each night, and the sun also rises.

So now that we’ve established the “normalcy” of everyday life in post-election America, what does the election and an administration change mean for small business? The reality is that we don’t know. Even the Federal Reserve Board’s Janet Yellen admits, “We don’t know what’s going to happen” with the US economy. But for small businesses, is there anything we can feel relatively confident about in the immediate future? Let’s look at a couple of areas.

If the new administration has its way, and there is not much reason to think it won’t, taxes, especially for high wage earners, will go down. The anticipated effect of that money “trickling down” is to prompt big business to create more jobs, thus spurring the economy. Will it in fact trickle down, and more importantly for us in Hawaii with an economy made up largely of small businesses, will it trickle down to small business? Depends whom you ask.

What about international trade? Hawaii, poised as it is, smack dab between the mainland and Asia, is positioned to be impacted by anything that changes Asian trade patterns. Will the Trans Pacific Partnership, or the lack thereof, have a direct impact on Hawaii? I guess you might say that if implemented it might spur non- Chinese trade, and the abandonment of it might make Chinese trade more significant. Abandonment of the TPP seems less unknown than most things as this is sounding like almost a done deal, but either way change seems to be in the wind.

Then there is the Affordable Care Act. Will it stay or will it go? And if it stays will all of it stay? And which parts? The answers seem to depend on which day you ask the question, but for Hawaii our Prepaid Health Care Act, with some components more stringent than the federal act, trumps the ACA (unfortunate play on words), so the impact on most employers should be minimal. For people buying insurance on the individual market, the answers to those questions have potentially much more impact.

Now to global warming. So, Chinese hoax (there are those Chinese again), or scientifically based fact? It’s been pretty well established by the scientific community that this is a real threat about which we need to do something, in fact a lot of things. Here again, Hawaii as an island state, like islands everywhere, is sort of the canary in the coal mine. What happens with global warming, the rise of ocean levels and changing weather patterns will affect us in a number of ways, and affect us first, and we’re already seeing changes. Small businesses can and should see this as a threat. Agricultural businesses particularly need to be prepared for changing rainfall patterns and businesses all over need to be prepared for increased threats of extreme weather. Also, my guess is that small businesses should expect insurance premium increases in the face of rising property risks.

Lastly, both candidates and parties saw the need for investment in our country’s aging infrastructure. We share that need in Hawaii with our mainland compatriots, and so all other things being equal, we would expect some of that spending on infrastructure to happen in Hawaii. This would benefit the small businesses that work in construction and the businesses that provide goods and services to those workers. All things are not equal though, and I suspect that the needs of Hawaii stand a good chance of being eclipsed by the much greater magnitude of the needs and voices of mainland states, who are dealing with severely degraded and much older infrastructures. Here small and all businesses in Hawaii need to make their voices heard to try to level the playing field so we get some of the infrastructure investment we need.

These are only some of the areas of concern for small business post-election; there are just not a lot of answers yet. Small business, almost by definition, must be prepared for anything though, so this is another set of those things businesses with limited resources face all the time, just more so. Stay strong, stay alert and remember, the sun also rises. And since we’re in Hawaii, that sun shines particularly strongly.

Our next workshop, How to Start a Business in Hawaii, will be held on Dec. 14. Details and registration at www.hisbdc.org.

Boyd is the director of the West Hawaii Small Business Development Center