And when I see my taxes going down every quarter — well, that means I am going to start investing again.”
While much has been made about the stock market’s nearly 14 percent rally since the election, economists say
that when it comes to assessing the genuine potential for the United States economy, confidence among small-business owners is a more grounded and forward-looking indicator.
“That guy is a junkyard dog, doing his tweets at 3 a.m.
and taking on the news media — I just get strength from him,” Mr. Soltis said over a wine-soaked dinner with a large group of his small-business friends and peers from around town.
“And now we have seen this huge spike in small-business confidence since the election,” Mr. Korzenik said, pointing to a chart.
Of late, the local economy has been recovering as thriving industries like health care have picked up the slack,
and the unemployment rate, at 4.7 percent, stands exactly at the national figure of 4.7 percent for February.
So for all that General Electric, Caterpillar or Ford Motor talks about building factories
and hiring workers, the $18 trillion United States economy will not truly move until the burghers in Toledo and other parts of the country start to invest and add jobs.
But all 11 executives agreed: Never in recent years had they been so bullish about their businesses as they were now
under a president (and fellow small-business owner, albeit a very rich one) whom they see as one of their own.
Which is why Mr. Korzenik was so excited about the recent surge in the small-business confidence index,
as measured by the National Federation of Independent Business, the industry’s trade group.