GREENVILLE, N.C.—Entrepreneurship is in Fred George’s bloodline.
“Every ancestor I know was a businessman,” George told The Daily Signal, as he stood on the floor of one of his five secondhand Trade It! retail stores in North Carolina. “I’ve got decades of experience, and the things that I learned growing up from my dad, who’s a businessman, he learned from his dad,” he said.
Trade It! operates somewhat like a pawn shop, but without the cash loan component. Individuals sell items, whether a TV, a watch, or a piece of furniture, to the store and then the store resells the items.
Despite his years of experience, George says he has had plenty of ups and downs as a businessman, but “the [President Donald] Trump years were the best we’ve done,” he said.
“Money seemed to be flowing a lot more during the Trump years,” said George, who also runs a shop where vendors can rent a space to sell antiques, books, records, and other items. “People were spending and earning, and of course, that’s good for everybody,” he said.
George’s multivendor shop and one of his Trade It! stores are located in Nash County, North Carolina, a swing county that President Joe Biden narrowly won by only 120 votes in 2020.
George, 60, has been doing business in and around Nash County for about 25 years.
Each of his five Trade It! locations do between $1 million and $2 million in business a year, while his multivendor shop is designed as an avenue to teach and train others how to go into retail entrepreneurship.
Right now, business appears to have slowed, George said.
“People seem to be, I think, pulling back on spending now, because of all the uncertainty and the inflation.”
Inflation currently sits at 2.4%, but was much higher earlier in the Biden administration.
“I’m not a member of either party,” George said. “I’m not a big party-politics guy. But as a businessman … I don’t trust [Vice President] Kamala Harris to change things for the better.”
As a political “spectator,” George said he thinks “Kamala [Harris] is far to the left of Joe Biden, adding that despite Harris announcing that she is won’t “tax tips and wants to build a wall, all of a sudden, it goes against everything she’s ever stood for. So, I’m nervous about it, and most of the business owners I know are very nervous about it.”
Whoever wins the election on Nov. 5, George says there are two or three policy actions the next president could take that would be “huge” for his businesses.
Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, aspects of which are set to expire at the end of 2025, so that tax rates don’t increase, would be significant, he said, adding, “I think some of the new rulings by the Department of Labor are hard for businesses to deal with, and I’m hoping that a Trump presidency will see some of those reversed.”
“I’d love to see the world become more affordable again,” he said, adding that he also wants to see “the price of gasoline [go] down, because what somebody spends on gasoline they can’t spend with me.”
The businessman is also a supporter of Trump’s plan to put “some tariffs on Chinese slave labor products that … compete with American products.”
Trump has repeatedly said he will implement tariffs on companies that don’t make their products in the United States.
George is also supporting Trump because he wants a secure border and is concerned at the number of criminals and gang members who have entered the country in recent years.
Like himself, George says most business owners he knows try to stay out of politics because they want to attract the business of individuals in both political parties, but “most of the business folks I know are pulling for Trump.”
