‘There’s No Question Prices Are Elevated’: Trump Official Addresses Small Businesses’ Economic Pain

Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler acknowledged that Americans are facing increased prices but promised that the economy will improve after the military operation in Iran ends. 

“There’s no question in recent weeks, prices have bumped up because of rising gas prices due to the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz now,” Loeffler told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. “Obviously, with gas prices bumping up, that does ripple through the supply chain.”

But Loeffler said the administration is doing “everything we can in the meantime until the conclusion of this war, which we do believe is short-term, to continue to alleviate the pressures of the Biden administration.”

Loeffler called this a “short-term impact to what is a longer-term path,” adding that inflation will soon return to where it was before the war at 2.4%. 

“When we get through the other side of this war, we are going to get back to a more stable price environment than we have ever had,” she said, “and lower energy prices for longer than they’ve ever been.”

When asked if the Small Business Administration would give aid to small businesses harmed by rising prices, Loeffler said she was doing that by cutting Biden-era regulations. 

“The Biden administration applied $5 trillion of regulations during their four years, both through the Biden executive orders, massively expanded Green New Deal mandates through the regulatory agencies, we’re rolling those back,” she said. 

“Regulation and taxes are two of small businesses’ biggest threats, and those were two promises that the Biden administration would have carried on had President Trump not been elected,” she continued. “They wanted higher taxes. They wanted more regulation.”

Rolling back regulation has spurred record small business formation, a sign of small business optimism, Loeffler said. Small business optimism dipped below the 52-year average of 98.0 for two consecutive months, according to the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index. 

“It’s one of the most underreported pieces of news, right at about 550,000 entities formed in the last month, building on about a 400-to-500,000 average during President Trump’s term,” Loeffler said. “Nothing says optimism and confidence in the future like starting a small business or hiring employees, and we’ve seen those both really trend upwards.”

President Donald Trump has asked Congress to cut the national gas tax to alleviate gas prices for consumers. Loeffler said the president is looking “at a portfolio of additional options, other regulatory relief.”

“You contrast that with the state, like California, with massive regulations where their gas prices are persistently high because of onerous regulations,” she said. 

“I think the president is going to be very mindful of what levers really would work to have relief,” she added, “and I think he’s fully committed to the mission of ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.”

The vast majority of Americans support the mission in Iran, Loeffler said. 

“You think about a nuclear-empowered Iran and what they could do with their thumb on the price of the world’s energy supplies, like oil, and they just show how they would use that threat,” she said. “This president has taken quick action to do what presidents for the last four decades had hoped or wished they had done, and he’s going to continue to end this threat once and for all.”