Small businesses face a “tornado” of challenges: cuts, frosts and now prices

It was a bad week for Ben Coryell, who runs an orientation company in savagery in Golden, Colo.

He received several calls from clients who wanted to cancel their climbing courses and their mountaineering expeditions during the summer, often citing the second reflections on large purchases, because the Trump administration launched the economy in a turmoil with attractive prices.

At the same time, Mr. Coryell wonders how long his business, Golden Mountain Guides, can continue to offer these trips, because the staff cuts at the National Park Service have maintained the treatment of the permits he needs to operate along the high -demand routes. And with these cuts leaving fewer patrol rangers, it fears that operators without license can run.

So far, he has not dismissed anyone, but it seems more and more likely that it was necessary.

“It really starts to look like a large part of the operations on which we have depended could be hit during the next number of years until we can find a healthy status quo,” he said.

Thousands of entrepreneurs find themselves in similar positions while they confront the blizzard of Washington changes in the past two and a half months. Funding freezes, endowment cuts to federal agencies and the repression of immigration – as well as, of course, prices – throw a lot into the troubles, with little certainty about how to proceed.

“It is like a tornado for owners of small businesses,” said Natalie Madeira Cofield, director general of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, who supports initiatives to help companies with less than 10 employees. “It’s an unprecedented moment.”