Business Environment Generally Bright in 2017 Labor Issues, Health Care Costs Remain Challenging for Masschusetts’ Small Businesses
By Joe Kourieh
F
ollowing the most unorthodox election in American history, for business owners throughout the nation and especially in Massachusetts, the stars seem to have aligned coming into 2017. With a new president branded as overtly business friendly and a local economy mid-boom, those on the front lines supporting small and familyowned businesses agree that morale is high among executives. “They feel like they have their guy in the White House now,” said Gerry
Nadeau, senior vice president of commercial banking at Rockland Trust, one of the top small business lenders in the commonwealth. “Trump is a businessman who they can relate to – he had successes, and also financial troubles, when they did.” President Donald Trump is the harbinger of changes both cultural, raising business to a level of reverence not seen since Reagan, and practical, promising sweeping tax and regulation reforms. Specifically, Trump aims to reduce the
business tax rate from 35 to 15 percent, and has already signed an executive order reducing federal funding for regulations to $0 for the year, and prohibiting agencies from creating a new regulation unless two are sacrificed. If this uncharacteristically swift storm of action in D.C. were not enough to embolden qualified Bay State entrepreneurs to expand their operations or jump into the game, the economic wave of growth that washed over the state Continued on page 6 5