This year’s election is shaping up to be particularly ugly for the business world, with two presidential candidates who could not be further apart in their approaches to taxes and regulation.
On top of that, control of Congress is also up for grabs, which could significantly hurt or help the chance that Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump could see their agendas for the country unfold.
That’s helped push uncertainty among small business owners to an all-time high since the nearly 40-year inception of a monthly survey the National Federation of Independent Business conducts to gauge small business sentiment.
Anxiety about the election has forced businesses of all sizes into an uncomfortable holding pattern that ultimately could negatively impact their bottom lines and the US economy as a whole, experts say.
Nearly a third of people in financial decision-making roles said they “postponed,” “scaled down,” “delayed indefinitely,” or “permanently canceled” their short-term and long-term investment plans because of election uncertainty this year, a recent Federal Reserve survey shows. These leaders predict their firms’ revenue and employment growth this year will be lower than that of firms whose investment plans aren’t impacted by the election.
That’s according to the latest quarterly CFO survey from the Atlanta and Richmond Federal Reserve banks, in conjunction with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The survey panel includes leaders from smaller US businesses as well as at Fortune 500 companies across all major industries nationwide.