{"id":344936,"date":"2025-12-12T19:10:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344936\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T19:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:10:13","slug":"federal-economic-policies-stir-up-an-unusual-level-of-impact-on-the-ground-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/344936\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal economic policies stir up an unusual level of impact on the ground in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a part of an occasional series looking at aspects of Colorado\u2019s faltering economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As part of her job, Eve Lieberman talks to businesses across Colorado every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the top challenges that they are facing right now is the uncertainty with regards to tariffs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. The state estimated that Colorado businesses have had tariff rates increase seven-fold, from 3 percent in 2024 to 21 percent 2025. And it\u2019s having an impact.<\/p>\n

\"DavidHart Van Denburg\/CPR NewsDavid Miller packs components to ship as Dakota Mossbrook assembles a bike at Borealis in Colorado Springs, April 15, 2025. Tariffs on components from China have put a big strain on Borealis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are considering whether to raise prices, do they absorb those costs? Do they pass it on to consumers? What does that do in terms of their business model? Do they have to let go of certain employees? Do they have to reduce salaries?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis was more blunt. \u201cThe very people building Colorado\u2019s economy are paying more because of [President Donald Trump\u2019s] misguided trade war.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is just one example of how federal policies made 2,000 miles away can impact local businesses and individuals and reverberate across the state economy. There are a lot of other federal policies and decisions \u2014 from taxes and regulations to federal job layoffs or cuts to social programs \u2014 that can help or hurt economic growth in Colorado.<\/p>\n

The outlook for the state economy next year is pretty flat. The annual Colorado Business Economic Outlook for 2026 from the University of Colorado Boulder\u2019s Leeds School of Business expects slow growth, including slow job growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is unusual for Colorado to have that slow of growth outside of a period when we are entering or exiting a recession,\u201d said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the Business Research Division at the school.<\/p>\n

While state and local policies also factor in, there has been an unusual level of impact coming from federal policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of focus on tariffs, but federal layoffs have impacted workers in the state, the government shutdown, the cuts in federal food aid like SNAP means less people buying food in the local grocery store, less government spending overall going to universities, labs, even agriculture and a drop in international tourism due to the Trump administration, just to name some.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"POTATOHart Van Denburg\/CPR NewsPotato harvest time on a farm between Monte Vista and Alamos in the San Luis Valley, Sept. 29, 2025. The valley is said to be the second-largest producer of potatoes in the United States.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not all doom and gloom. Lewandowski is hopeful the tax policies could help next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’ll lead to perhaps some more investment and some more income for households in Colorado. So, while we sort of view some of the policies as having a drag on the Colorado economy in the near term, I think there are some upsides that we are acknowledging as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s something the White House is hoping people keep in mind. It\u2019s not just one policy, but the totality of policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of businesses are better off under all of these policies jointly than they would have been otherwise had all of these policies not come into place,\u201d Pierre Yared, acting chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for the Trump Administration, told CPR News.<\/p>\n

\"\"Caitlyn Kim\/CPR NewsPierre Yared, acting director of the Council of Economic Advisers, is bullish that Trump\u2019s economic policy will bolster the economy.<\/p>\n

Yared is bullish about the U.S. economy. He said there are three main legs to Trump\u2019s economic stool.<\/p>\n

The first is the One Big Beautiful Bill (which many Republican members of Congress now call the Working Families Tax Cut), which Republicans believe will help put more money in people\u2019s pockets. Think non tax on tips or not tax on overtime. Yared said 26 percent of Coloradans would benefit\u00a0 from the overtime tax break, while 4 percent of Colorado workers will benefit from the no tax on tips. (Both of these tax breaks are temporary and last through 2028.)<\/p>\n

The second leg is focused on deregulation, which Yared said, \u201calso reduces the costs of businesses, of making things. So that also makes it easier, that helps businesses flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the last leg is tariffs. Yared argues it can protect businesses from unfair trading practices from other countries and provide incentives to look domestically for suppliers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all these together that Yared said, \u201cis leading to an extreme optimism business, optimism, a lot of investment in the country. Some of that is being reflected in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AKevin J. Beaty\/CPR News<\/p>\n

But that optimism isn\u2019t necessarily translating down to the people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that people are feeling the squeeze these days,\u201d said Martin Shields, professor of Economics at Colorado State University. \u201cThere’s a lot of what we’re calling \u2018the vibe session\u2019 \u2014 that the vibe just doesn’t feel right, even if the numbers are OK. But in that context, there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

That uncertainty and anxiety is reflected in recent polling, too. Last month, a Fox News poll found that 76 percent of respondents viewed economic conditions as either \u201cnot so good\u201d or \u201cpoor.\u201d The Colorado Polling Institute found that 46 percent think Colorado\u2019s economy will get worse next year, with 43 percent saying it will stay about the same. Only 12 percent think it will get better.<\/p>\n

Whenever there\u2019s a change in administration or change in power in Washington, there will be a shift in policy priorities, leading to some uncertainty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s second administration has been going full force in reversing what it can from the Biden administration. For example, the clean energy economy. The Biden administration supported policies in this area, and the Trump administration reversed or stopped many of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these companies, like General Motors and Chrysler and Ford, are building out this new EV infrastructure investing billions of dollars in battery technology and research and development,\u201d Shields said. \u201cAnd now all of a sudden that’s all pulled out from under them..that’s a lot of money that was thrown away for no good reason.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He noted some of the companies will go ahead, but \u201cit certainly changes how businesses plan and sometimes makes previous investments irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to go from one extreme to the other, that\u2019s pretty chaotic at times,\u201d Shields said.<\/p>\n

A report from the think tank Energy Innovation said doing away with solar and wind tax credits in the One Big Beautiful Bill will cost the state $7 billion in economic activity and more than 9,500 jobs will be lost.<\/p>\n

\"SOLAR-NEW-HOMES-BRECKENRIDGE-20251128\"Hart Van Denburg\/CPR NewsSolar energy panels in front, and on the roofs, of recently built homes in the Vista Verde neighborhood near Breckenridge, Nov. 28, 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe No. 1 thing that businesses and households want is certainty,\u201d said Richard Wobbekind, senior economist at the Leeds School of Business at CU Boulder. \u201cI think it\u2019s an extremely important role for government.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that when the government creates so much uncertainty, it can upset the macro economy. He\u2019s not against change, like shrinking the size of government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to do them in a way that is well thought out, and in my opinion, phased in over time and doesn\u2019t create disruptions that lead to the uncertainty equivalent\u2026So to me, it\u2019s a very important role to make the environment as certain as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And with no agreement on extending a subsidy for people who buy health insurance on the marketplace, there\u2019s more uncertainty heading into next year for people around health care.<\/p>\n

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet agrees. He sits on the Senate Finance committee, which focuses on tax and trade policies, as well as entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid.<\/p>\n

For him Trump\u2019s tariff policies are illustrative \u201cof something that you can\u2019t plan for, you can\u2019t make good decisions about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a farmer or a rancher or a small business owner in Colorado, you deserve to know why the president makes the decisions he makes. And you deserve to be able to predict, at least with some degree of confidence, what the next six months is going to bring,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cAnd what I found is so different about President Trump\u2019s approach is that hour to hour, nobody can predict what he\u2019s going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennet also said this is not an Democratic or a Republican problem or an issue, nor an issue of federal versus state policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to bring the American Dream back to America and to Colorado. And it\u2019s going to take Republicans and Democrats working together. And it\u2019s going to have to last beyond just one majority in the Congress or one governor\u2019s term in office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s economy is flashing warning signs. Job growth has slowed to a trickle. Layoffs are inching up. The housing market is in a slump. Both the state and its biggest population center are struggling to plug massive budget holes. On top of all that, the longest government shutdown<\/a> in history was weighing on the economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The big question, though, is whether all the bleak data points to something more serious: recession. And the answer is complicated.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Colorado Public Radio takes a look at what those warning signs might mean through the new series Silent Recession. Read more stories in the series here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a part of an occasional series looking at aspects of Colorado\u2019s faltering economy. As part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,9045,158465,101,2421,62376,134],"class_list":["post-344936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-colorado-news","tag-colorados-silent-recession","tag-economy","tag-federal-government","tag-joblessness","tag-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}