A small business owner who once backed Donald Trump is now speaking out, saying a cornerstone MAGA policy has triggered unexpected consequences that are hitting his livelihood hard.
Jay Allen, a manufacturing business owner in Arkansas and a supporter of Trump, told the Associated Press a key pillar of the president’s economic agenda has backfired on his company.
Allen had voted for Trump expecting tax cuts and deregulation to boost growth, but instead, he says Trump’s import tariffs have sharply increased the cost of essential imported components like steel, engines, and machinery parts used in his equipment.
Those rising expenses have forced difficult decisions. Allen reports operating at a loss in 2025, cutting his workforce significantly, and raising prices by up to 10 percent—moves he fears could further reduce demand.
And things could be about to get worse for Allen. In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that many of the administration’s tariffs—imposed under emergency powers—were illegal.
That decision immediately halted those tariffs and the administration is now rushing to replace those invalidated tariffs with new ones that could expand to more countries or industries, potentially increasing costs further even as companies are still dealing with the fallout of the old ones.
With new tariffs potentially on the horizon, Allen warns that the burden is increasingly falling on businesses and workers alike, squeezing the very people the policy aimed to help.
“What’s really sad is the unintended consequences of his tariffs are hurting manufacturing in our country,” Allen told AP. “Unfortunately, the working-class people are getting squeezed.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump has argued that tariffs would revive U.S. manufacturing and help reduce federal deficits, but those outcomes have yet to materialize.
Instead, factory employment has declined, with tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost during his first year back in office, and deficit projections continue to rise.
Still, the administration points to strong investment, hiring tied to factory construction, and improving productivity as signs of long-term gains, according to AP.
But factory construction spending has recently dipped, and economists caution that even under optimistic conditions, it could take years—potentially a decade—before manufacturing jobs recover to pre-tariff levels.
Amid the uncertainty, the latest NBC News poll, conducted between February 27 and March 3 among 1,000 registered voters, showed Trump facing his toughest ratings yet on the economy.
Sixty-two percent of voters said they disapproved of his handling of inflation and the cost of living, with only 36 percent approving.
And polls have also shown Trump facing declining approval ratings with voters he made the biggest inroads with in 2024, including Black, Latino, working-class, and young voters.
Meanwhile, polls have even shown that some Trump voters are now reluctant to publicly acknowledge they voted for him.
Polling by Verasight and The Argument conducted between August 2025 and February 2026 showed that 2.7 percent of 2024 Trump voters now falsely claim they voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, while 3.3 percent say they voted for neither Trump nor Harris.
But the pattern was much stronger former Trump voters who currently disapprove of the president. Roughly 15 percent of his 2024 voters now disapprove of his performance, and within that group, about one in four deny having voted for him, with roughly 12–13 percent saying they backed Harris and around 12 percent saying they didn’t vote.
One Trump voter recently put their feelings about the president bluntly. “You are a worthless pile of s--t,” Amanda Robbins, who voted for Trump three times, told NBC News’s Meet the Press NOW on Tuesday after she was asked what she would say to the president.
