Trump’s Tariffs Devastate Small Businesses, Costing Nearly Half a Million Jobs in 2025 Alone

The Trump administration’s tariffs have been hailed by some as a tough stance on trade, but new data from the Joint Economic Committee’s Minority report shows the devastating toll these policies have taken on America’s smallest businesses. According to the report released during National Small Business Week 2026, small businesses with fewer than 10 employees lost 292,000 jobs in 2025 — nearly 4.5 times the job losses they suffered during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

This is not a brief dip or isolated incident. The report highlights 13 consecutive months of job losses through April 2026 for these tiny businesses, many of which operate in industries especially exposed to tariffs like construction and leisure/hospitality. Revenue has plummeted alongside employment: construction firms with fewer than 10 employees have seen an 18 percent revenue drop since April 2025, while leisure and hospitality businesses have lost 15.2 percent of their revenue.

Senator Maggie Hassan, Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee, condemned the tariffs in a statement accompanying the report. She emphasized that these policies have “undone years of small business owners’ hard work” by driving up costs and creating crippling economic uncertainty. Small business owners are forced into impossible decisions: raising prices, laying off workers, or shutting down entirely.

The report also includes firsthand accounts from small manufacturers like Mace Machines in New Hampshire, which lamented how tariffs on raw materials and machinery squeeze already tight margins and make competing in the global market harder, not easier.

This new data adds to a growing body of evidence that Trump’s tariffs have been a disaster for the backbone of the American economy. While touted as a way to protect American industry, these tariffs have instead fueled economic chaos, increased consumer prices, and handed corporate cronyism a free pass — all while small business owners and workers pay the steepest price.

The Joint Economic Committee’s findings underscore the urgent need to rethink these damaging trade policies before more small businesses are forced to close their doors for good. The Trump tariffs are not just an abstract trade war; they are a direct attack on the livelihoods of millions of Americans who power local communities and drive economic growth.