Crossfiled1 outlets · filed 18 October 2026
Small business owners are doing OK – but will that help Trump overcome his low approval ratings?
Overall, economic sentiment for Trump is poor, but small businesses seem fairly confident, according to several surveys There are 34m small businesses in the United States. They employ approximately half of the country’s workers and generate about half of the country’s GDP.
What the coverage shows
All four outlets focus on Trump’s approval rating reaching a new low and tie that to the midterm outlook. France 24 and Sky News foreground Republican election risk, while PBS NewsHour centers a discussion format with Tamara Keith and Carrie Dann and adds other political topics from the same segment. The Guardian US is the outlier, using the low approval rating to frame a question about whether small business confidence could help Trump, and it is the only one that highlights small business surveys.
Written by Crossfiled from the 1 headlines and extracts below, not from the articles themselves. It describes how the outlets framed this, not what happened. Open any headline for a summary of that article.
How it broke
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