‘Dear Lord, May We Get This Damn Grant, Please’
President Trump’s flurry of executive orders are already creating uncertainty for businesses—even in places where his base is strongest.
Good Morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
When trying to sell a business, many owners make the same mistakes.
The Section 179 tax deduction gets a bump.
Shopping malls are attracting Zoomers by offering an extension of their digital lives.
The Florida law expected to crack down on immigration hasn’t really been enforced.
POLICY
A Trump executive order aims to block Biden-era infrastructure spending: “The language in question, in one of dozens of orders Trump issued on his first day in office, commands agencies to ‘immediately pause the disbursement of funds’ under former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law and his 2022 climate statute. That wording could imperil billions of dollars in funding for projects that states have already begun working on, some lawmakers and policy experts said Tuesday, for everything from roads and bridges to broadband and withstanding the effects of climate change.”
“Some said it also implies that Trump, who has threatened to defy decades of accepted law by blocking congressionally approved spending, could go even further — by refusing to honor contracts in which the federal government promised funding for states, cities, and other recipients. And the havoc could range far beyond the targets Trump specified in his order, such as Biden’s slow-rolling $7.5 billion effort to install electric vehicle chargers from coast to coast.”
“Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, said the pause on disbursements from the infrastructure law could at the very least present serious issues for states, all of which have been guaranteed money through a complicated formula included in the law. Such guarantees have long been the way that Washington doles out money to states for highways, bridges, and other transportation projects. A stop on the flow of funds ‘gets really sticky, and I’m not sure if you want to do that. You could see strong objections from states with projects underway,’ Spear said.”
“Some GOP senators who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law said they hope Trump’s action wouldn’t stop the flow of infrastructure money to their states and local communities.” READ MORE
