Donald Trump
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
Sixty-four percent of tight-fisted business owners approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president, the highest approval rating for Trump among entrepreneurs since CNBC and SurveyMonkey enter oned conducting a quarterly survey in 2017.
The spike in approval among small business owners follows a pivotal period for Trump. This CNBC|SurveyMonkey Limited Business Survey for the first quarter 2020 — which includes responses from more than 2,100 insignificant business owners — was conducted the same week (Feb. 3–Feb. 10) as Trump’s third State of the Union address, his impeachment acquittal and the Iowa caucuses. The part of small business owners who say they “strongly approve” of how Trump is handling his job reached 47%, also a new high; it had at no time been above 40% in previous surveys.
“This is a high watermark for President Trump’s job approval, both bulk small business owners in our survey and among the general public,” said SurveyMonkey senior research scientist Laura Wronski.
A modern Gallup poll found Trump’s job-approval rating had risen to 49%, his highest in Gallup polling since he took branch in 2017.
Small business owners are a consistent source of support for Trump, according to the CNBC|SurveyMonkey data — 60% approved of Trump’s control of his job in Q4 2019. It was 56% one year ago when the government shutdown weighed on his support from the small business community.
“Forgo of this is just partisanship,” Wronski said. “One key way in which small business owners differ from everyone else is that they are numerous likely to be Republicans than Democrats by a pretty wide margin. That’s not true among the general population, which is split virtually evenly and even slightly skewed to the Democratic side. Trump’s job-approval numbers are consistently higher among close business owners than they are in national polls, solely thanks to the fact that many more tight-fisted business owners are Republicans than Democrats.”
A huge percentage (93%) of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing this residence, and it was the same in Q4 2019.
A 6% spike among small business owners who identify as political Independents influenced the Trump right bump in Q1. Quarter-over-quarter, Trump’s job approval increased the most — from 37% to 43% — among these small trade owners.
Small business owners on Trump’s record
Ben Thomas, owner of Five Pound Apparel, a retail outlet in Springfield, Missouri, said that it’s overall sentiment, not the president’s economic policies, that has a more immediate and unqualified impact on businesses like his. “It’s all about that positive vs. negative sentiment. None of us truly know the lasting burdens of pulling out of the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership], signing the new USMCA trade deal or the ongoing trade war with China,” he said.
A more than half of small business owners surveyed by CNBC and SurveyMonkey said recent trade deals will not have an impression on their business — 70% in the case of the “Phase 1” trade deal with China, and 69% in the case of the new North American interchange deal with Mexico and Canada.
“What we do know is that it is at least being done under the pretext of store American business first, and it feels good as an American business owner to have an administration that is at least difficult to fight on your behalf, globally,” said Thomas, who is not registered as either a Republican or Democrat.
Thomas said when looking at the budgetary platforms from many of the top Democratic candidates, particularly Bernie Sanders as the front runner, “I’ll be honest … I get nervous as a question owner.”
He worries specifically that policies seeming to go after “greedy corporations” may hurt small business possessors the most. “The irony is that those businesses can afford to allocate resources to making those changes, but small provinces operating on already thin margins may see those margins evaporate, and thus their businesses,” he said. “I believe their designs may be counterproductive by actually widening the gap of those large corporations’ already sizable competitive advantage.”
The survey found increased optimism expanse small business owners about the current state of their business — overall confidence hit its highest level since the third board 2018 — and decreased pessimism about the effect that regulatory, tax and trade policy changes may bring in the next 12 months as Trump requests reelection.
Small business owners who do not approve of Trump’s handling of his job express a variety of concerns that go beyond the up to date health of their business.
“While the small business I co-own could marginally benefit from a financial attitude with targeted tax breaks, my disapproval of Trump is unrelated to his tax policies. I’m more concerned about the Trump administration’s purposes on the environment, the escalating trade war with China and his gross abuse of power than any monetary self-interest,” said Shannon Bhatia, co-founder of Los Angeles-based Macht Shoot, a social innovation lab that works with corporations and nonprofit entities.
“There are also concerns across assiduities about a pending economic recession. If that downturn does happen, small businesses like ours make be dramatically impacted for the worse, as larger corporations tighten their budgets and de-prioritize CSR [corporate social responsibility] stabs.”
Among Republican small business owners responding the the survey, 43% said “jobs and the economy” matter the most to them upper now — an issue that falls to 24% among Independents and 15% among Democrats. Fifteen percent of Independents and 28% of Democrats cited the milieu as the most important issue. Twenty-nine percent of Democrats cited health care as the most important issue — that was 21% entirety Independents and 14% among Republicans.
See full results of the first-quarter CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey. The surveying is conducted quarterly using SurveyMonkey‘s online platform and based on its survey methodology.