For 2026 Small Business Week, Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has been touring the country to listen to business owners and to promote how small businesses and large manufacturing corporations can work in tandem to raise the profile of a community, a city, and a nation.
On April 10, I was present as Loeffler toured the Hadrian Alabama Factory 4 (F4) facility in Northwest Alabama and spoke to small business leaders in the area about how the revitalization of this critical submarine components manufacturing plant will drive small business growth in rural America.
During the media scrum for that tour, Loeffler was asked what the biggest concerns were for the region’s small business owners. Loeffler quickly replied: “taxes and regulation.”
Loeffler then reflected on how the Working Families Tax Cut had brought needed relief to business owners. “Small businesses were most concerned that their tax bill was going to go up by 50%,” she said. “Fortunately, that bill passed through thanks to the hard work of the Congress and President Trump.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) confirms what Loeffler said: Taxes and companion regulations plague small business owners above all else. In CEI’s release of its annual “Ten Thousand Commandments” report, they capture the burden federal regulations place on America’s small businesses.
“Federal regulations continue to weigh heavily on American businesses and households, costing over $2.15 trillion each year—an average of $15,859 per household.
“Government regulations continue to cost Americans more than $2 trillion annually, despite efforts by the Trump administration to find ways to deregulate,” said Wayne Crews, author of the annual Ten Thousand Commandments report. “Businesses and citizens spend too much time and money trying to comply with rules and edicts imposed by Washington, and those costs mean higher prices, lost jobs, and lower quality of life for us all.”
But Loeffler further assured that the SBA was in a “deregulatory posture” to address this. “We have deregulated 100 regs for every new regulation that we’ve added,” Loeffler said.
This rate of deregulation far exceeds the two regulations out for every new regulation proposed during the first Trump administration, and it surpasses President Trump’s second-term goal of ten regulations killed for each new created.
In Loeffler’s conclusion to the media portion at the F4 plant, Loeffler emphasized how critical small businesses are to the health and maintenance of larger concerns like Hadrian, Alabama.
[N]ot only are they building out and maintaining and developing systems and facilities like this, but they support the communities that are coming here to serve the families that are part of this business. So, they’re absolutely part of the ecosystem.
Loeffler affirmed that her job was to work on behalf of small business, “to ensure that small businesses aren’t disadvantaged by regulation, lack of access to capital, unfair trade, and other things that a larger business might be able to solve on their own.”