The Trump administration proposed sweeping changes to Small Business Administration size standards, drastically lifting revenue and employee caps to let billion-dollar companies qualify for federal loans and contracts. Critics warn the policy threatens independent operators, while supporters argue the adjustments will reward growing enterprises and strengthen domestic supply chains.
Federal rules defining what constitutes a small business are facing their largest overhaul in history. Under a new rule proposal, the Small Business Administration would dramatically increase revenue and employee thresholds across numerous industries, allowing firms with thousands of workers and billions in revenue to access federal resources historically reserved for mom-and-pop operations. The Trump administration wants to change what it means to be a small business by raising the standard, allowing certain companies with more than 3,000 employees and making $1 billion to apply for federal loans and grants. Under a new rule proposal, the Small Business Administration would massively increase the current limit on how much a business may earn or how many people it may employ to be considered “small” – as part of a goal to “reward” growing firms.
Trump team wants to expand the definition of ‘small
Billion-Dollar Caps and Sector Shifts
The proposed thresholds introduce staggering increases across diverse market segments. In the financial sector, businesses handling miscellaneous financial investment activities
could make up to $1.011 billion to still be considered small – rather than the current standard.
Commentary: Small businesses despise Trump’s tariffs
Mere hours after the Trump administration’s latest tariff scheme launched on July 24, the government was sued again by the same small businesses that had already defeated prior White House tariff shenanigans, most notably at the Supreme Court. As Bloomberg Law reported, these companies are part of an increasingly vocal cohort of business owners who emerged as the face of mom-and-pop tariff resistance.
What about Walmart Inc., Ford Motor Co. and the other titans of corporate America paying many millions of dollars in new import taxes? They’ve mostly kept quiet. Much of this silence, the report explains, is strategy: Large U.S. firms don’t like the tariffs but have routed their objections through industry associations and legal filings to avoid blowback from the government or partisan customers. Doing so arguably makes good business sense, given President Donald Trump’s repeated targeting of companies that criticized his tariffs, publicized their price effects, or sought refunds following the White House’s Supreme Court loss. When a single presidential tweet can cause a company’s stock to crater, it’s often smarter to let smaller, more sympathetic firms carry the water,
explained one trade lawyer.
Political Backlash and Economic Warnings
Companies are getting tariff refunds of up to $2
Yet the silence from large firms — and the noise from small businesses — reflects a harsh financial reality: For big companies, the tariffs are a nuisance while for most all others they’re an existential threat hitting from three different directions. Given that smaller businesses employ almost half of America’s private-sector workforce, American consumers and businesses have largely paid the price for President Trump’s tariffs. Various studies have found that foreign exporters have shouldered between 4 and 10% of those tariffs. Now some American businesses are starting to get their money back. Big companies like FedEx, Amazon, Nike and Apple have reported large refund payments so far, ranging from $600 million to 2 billion dollars. This comes after the Supreme Court struck down a big part of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariff regime earlier this year. Theo Francis covers business for The Wall Street Journal.
Administration Rationale and Next Steps
U.S. companies paid around $160 billion for these unlawful tariffs. As Theo Francis noted when discussing how much of this money companies will get back, some of the companies are reporting that they are getting back pretty much everything that they paid or everything that they requested as a refund. They should be getting all of it, but we don’t know how much of it maybe would have gone to companies that are now bankrupt or out of business or that might not be claimed for one reason or another. While big corporations report significant amounts of refunds because they had significant tariff payments in the first place, small businesses face a much harder situation to see, as it all comes down to materiality.
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