“As President Trump says, small business is big business,” Loeffler stated. “99% of every business in America is classified as a small business. They create two out of every three new jobs.”
She stressed that nearly all manufacturers in the United States fall into this category. “In fact, 98% of all manufacturers in America are small businesses,” she explained. “So it’s our defense contractors who rely on those small manufacturers to produce sub-assemblies and other services.”
Loeffler argued that without small manufacturers, America’s ability to compete and innovate would collapse. “If we didn’t have the 600,000 small manufacturers in this country that employ five million Americans and soon to employ millions more with the $15 trillion that President Trump has brought into this country already, we wouldn’t be able to build things,” she said.
She slammed media narratives that dismiss US manufacturing capacity. “The media narrative is we can’t do it. We need to rely on the Chinese Communist Party to build things for us because we’re not capable. That’s not true,” Loeffler said. “We sent a man to the moon. We built airplanes. We’ve created AI and chips and fracking and all the things that power this economy toward exceptionalism that we’re returning to.”
Drawing on her own upbringing, Loeffler described what happens when small businesses vanish from local communities. “Without small business, though, that engine of Main Street, of job creation, and really of hope of our communities, like the community I grew up in—I grew up on a farm near a town of 600. There were two businesses in that community besides the grade school: a grain elevator and a union training center,” she said.
“When the jobs left our town, the last business, the union training center, closed. That meant there was no training, there were no apprenticeships, and there were no jobs. And these communities, thousands of them have been left behind. It crushed millions of dreams.”
According to Loeffler, Trump’s fair trade agenda is aimed at reversing this trend. “President Trump believes in the American worker. He believes in American industry. He knows that’s going to restore this country,” she said. “And that’s why this fair trade effort is so important. It’s not just about collecting tariffs. It’s about making our country safe and prosperous again, because we’ve been on the receiving side of really predatory trade practices by hundreds of countries around the world.”
