Uncertainty is running high on Main Street after a deluge of economic policy changes, with some entrepreneurs reporting unpaid invoices and other funding worries.
President Donald Trump’s first weeks in office have brought a flurry of changes from funding freezes and tariffs to a crackdown on diversity efforts. While courts have halted some of them, small businesses faced with higher costs, steep interest rates and more cautious consumers share a similar message: This isn’t helping.
David Funk said he was stunned when the U.S. Department of Agriculture rejected his $65,000 invoice for work his company had completed since October.
The founder of Zero Emissions Northwest, a Spokane, Washington-based consultancy, Funk connects farmers with federal grants to subsidize equipment purchases and energy bills. A week after his invoice denial, agency representatives confirmed it was because of Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order, which halted many projects funded through the Inflation Reduction Act.
“What it’s resulting in is jobs lost, projects canceled and more jobs lost,” said Funk, who furloughed all three of his employees about two weeks ago. Many of his clients are now stuck with equipment they can’t finance on their own. “It is shocking to some of them who have voted for Trump to realize that this might directly impact them,” he added.
Weeks after the Office of Management and Budget rescinded the sweeping freeze on grants and loans it had issued days earlier, Shaundell Newsome, founder of Sumnu Marketing in Las Vegas, said his agency’s internships could still be on the chopping block. The program, with space for four interns per year, is sustained by a Labor Department grant.
“There’s a ton of confusion about what’s real and what’s not real,” he said of the federal directives. “If we don’t have those dollars to offset the training now, we’ve got to make a business decision.”
Newsome still plans to make his next hire in March, after the agency that disburses the funds said they remained on track to reach him on schedule. But he’s concerned about funding for the rest of the year, including a summer program for high schoolers.