Small Businesses Cheer ‘New Sheriff in Town’ After Climate Pact Exit - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

By LANDON THOMAS Jr. JUNE 2, 2017, New York Times

Image from article, with caption: Louis M. Soltis, the owner of a company that manufactures control panels in Toledo, Ohio, said he was frustrated that President Trump's policies have faced so much opposition.

Excerpt:

While multinational corporations such as Disney, Goldman Sachs and IBM have opposed the president’s decision to walk away from the international climate agreement, many small companies around the country were cheering him on, embracing the choice as a tough-minded business move that made good on Mr.Trump’s commitment to put America’s commercial interests first. ...

“There is a new sheriff in town,” said Louis M. Soltis, the owner of a company in
Toledo that manufactures control panels for large factories. “But the biggest
frustration that I have is that there is so much resistance that is keeping him from
moving forward.”

But the move to pull the United States out of an agreement it had previously signed with 195 countries has opened up a fissure between smaller companies and some of the biggest names in business. [JB emphasis] In the hours after the president’s
announcement, dozens of companies including General Electric, Facebook and
Microsoft voiced their opposition to the decision, and two prominent chief
executives resigned from the president’s business advisory council.

Many small-­business leaders in the Midwest, on the other hand, were largely
unfazed.

For those more concerned with their local economies than global greenhouse
gas emissions, walking away from the Paris agreement was just another example of a
bottom­line business decision made by a president who knows a good deal from a
bad one. ...

“This just heightens the divide between big business and small business,” said Jeffrey Korzenik, an investment strategist for Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati who spends much of his time talking to small businesses in the Midwest. “They really have different worldviews.”

At the root of this disconnect is a sense that companies that employ up to a few hundred workers — such companies make up 99 percent of businesses in the United States and account for half of its private sector employment — are held to a more onerous standard than their larger peers when it comes to complying with regulations. ...