Everyone is hunkering down and building up cash. It’s never been this bad,” Scheffel told CNN in a phone interview. “It’s very uncertain and impossible to plan in this environment.” Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, accounting for the vast majority of total businesses in the nation, nearly half of all employees and the bulk of the job growth.

Consumer price inflation in Los Angeles stood at 3.5% in September compared with the previous year, higher than the national average of 3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While El-Sayed blamed bad U.S. policy decisions for illegal immigration, the data show otherwise. Recent federal surveys indicate that immigrants, legal and illegal, most often come to the United States because the country has more economic opportunities and a higher level of safety than other parts of the world, Central America in particular.

Across the country, around three-fourths of a million civilians work with the US military. Around half are thought to have been currently furloughed.

Between 2000 and 2022, according to USAFacts, there were 1,375 school shootings, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries. (And in the first ten months of 2025, there have been 141 incidents of gunfire on school grounds across the country, killing 44 people, according to Everytownresearch.org.

Infinitesimal Hawaiian output aside, America imports 99.99875 percent of its coffee, according to USAFacts.org. America’s 2023 cocoa bean exports totaled $2.57 million. Imports were 309 times higher: $793 million. Especially given consumers’ price concerns, tariffs should not be self-mutilating