After a banner year, many small businesses are becoming more cautious about their investment and hiring plans. Some are responding to early signs of slowing sales, while others fear that tariffs, unstable financial markets, the aftereffects of the government shutdown and other headwinds could damp economic growth in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported. Economic confidence among small firms, which edged downward for much of 2018, in January reached its lowest level since President Trump’s election, according to a monthly survey of 765 small firms for the Wall Street Journal by Vistage Worldwide Inc. (Vistage polls firms with between $1 million and $20 million of revenue.) Just 14 percent of firms expect the economy to improve this year, while 36 percent expect it to get worse. Forty-two percent of those surveyed said the Trump administration had improved prospects for their business, down from a high of 52 percent in January 2018, and 34 percent said that it had no impact. Nearly one in four small firms surveyed by Vistage said that the Trump administration had hurt the outlook for their business.
