President Trump hosted a White House summit with small business owners on Monday to promote his economic agenda ahead of a midterm battle focused on affordability.
More than 130 small business owners from across the country, spanning the manufacturing, food production, defense, energy and retail sectors, attended the event to celebrate the 2026 National Small Business Week award winners.
The president told the crowd assembled in the East Room that his administration has racked up multiple wins for business owners, including making the small business tax deduction permanent, allowing business owners to fully deduct the cost of factory construction, equipment and improvements, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime and expanding the child tax credit.
All of the tax cuts touted by Mr. Trump are part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“Thanks to these pro-growth policies, our economy is roaring and factory construction is way up. Business investment is more than triple compared to that of just a short time ago,” Mr. Trump said.
This past tax season, more than six million tax filers claimed no tax on tips deduction, more than 25 million claimed no tax on overtime, reducing taxes by nearly $7,000 for around 12 million small business owners, according to the Treasury Department.
The tax cuts were expected to keep 26 million small businesses from seeing a tax rate more than double and generate $750 million in economic growth, according to the White House.
America’s 36.8 million small businesses are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy, accounting for 43.5% of the gross domestic product and employing 45.9% of the private sector workforce, or 62.3 million people. More than 96% of America’s small businesses have fewer than 10 workers, and 99.7% have fewer than 100 employees.
Mr. Trump last year imposed steep tariffs on virtually all of the U.S.’s trading partners, but those tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. Mr. Trump is rebuilding his tariff framework with a blanket global tariff under separate authorities and industry-specific tariffs that were not impacted by the court’s ruling.
“Tariffs will be the elephant in the room,” said Dan Anthony, Executive Director of We Pay the Tariffs, which opposes the levies. “Nobody may raise them with the president directly, but these businesses are applying for refunds and anxiously staring down the permanent Section 301 and 232 tariffs the administration is planning. Instead of celebrating these businesses and small business week, we are dealing with rising costs, refund uncertainty, and reduced manufacturing thanks to tariffs.”
Among the small business owners featured Monday was National Business Person of the Year Award recipient Mark Lamoncha. He spent 40 years leading Humtown products, a 3D and sand printing company, in Columbiana, Ohio. Also highlighted were Rick Harrison, the owner of Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Wes Lyon, Katie Lyon and Max Berry, co-founders of Allegiance Flag, a flag manufacturer they started in their garage with less than $5,000 in personal savings and Gregory Owens and Ian Hood, who founded Buffalo Jackson Trading Co., a North Carolina-based leather goods manufacturer.
