Market Update: Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council – Full Analysis

By SBE Council at 14 November, 2025, 2:02 pm

By Karen Kerrigan –

Businesses of all sizes in New York City are bracing for the policies of newly-elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani. If the promises of city-owned grocery stores, a mandated $30 per-hour minimum wage, higher taxes in general, “public ownership” of targeted sectors, and rent controls are not enough, the future Mayor has welcomed the services of former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan into his circle. Khan is dusting off her FTC playbook and scouring old NYC laws with the goal of supercharging Mamdani’s executive power to micro-manage all types of businesses and practices through archaic decrees and socialistic policies.

 (Kerrigan in Real Clear Policy: Small Business Cannot Afford More Leftists Like Lina Khan and Zohran Mamdani)

On a bright note, Khan has amassed a bad track record locking in policy and legal wins. But her activity at the FTC still came with big costs and lost economic opportunities.

Many FTC rules championed under Khan are still being challenged in the courts. Several have already been reversed, as the FTC snubbed regulatory process requirements and statutory protections for small businesses. Legal challenges spearheaded by Khan have also been losers – every single merger challenge (to date), for example, has gone down in flames. Hopes are not high for other pending cases, which were pushed on questionable grounds, such as the FTC’s unenlightened view of markets and how they work.

Khan’s legal and regulatory pursuits have been a big waste of taxpayer resources. Moreover, uncertainty fueled during her tenure – on top of untold millions in legal fees spent by the private sector – diverted investment and human capital away from innovation, opportunity and growth. Residual harm is still being felt today, which is why the Trump administration must wipe the slate clean of Khan’s harmful legal and regulatory pursuits.

Khan’s leftover policies and legal entanglements are undermining President Trump’s economic growth agenda, just as they will NYC’s tenuous business ecosystem once the Mamdani-Khan agenda takes hold this coming January.

Make no mistake, it’s tough doing business in the Big Apple. High taxes, high costs, and a complex and burdensome regulatory system present barriers and financial challenges that can crush a small business. NYC needs a more welcoming business environment, not one that drives capital and businesses away.

Dusting off antiquated NYC laws squares with Khan’s policy mindset – outdated, narrow, and static.  Most elected and public officials look at ways to cleanup or eliminate outdated laws for the good of their business environment and citizenry. Khan is doing the opposite for sheer ideological gain.

At the FTC, Khan resurrected the outdated Robison-Patman Act, issued thousands of “notices of penalty offense” (“essentially abandoned in the 1970s”), ignored regulatory procedures meant to protect small businesses and a fair process, and filed lawsuits based on uninformed market definitions or how she imagined markets and technology may develop in the future. During legal and regulatory proceedings, the FTC during her tenure appeared out of touch with how the startup ecosystem works, how small businesses use certain business practices, or how they are selling, as the FTC’s final actions rarely considered the impact on the entrepreneurial sector.

For example, in the Amazon case, where Khan claims the e-commerce platform is punishing small business sellers and ripping them off, an April 2025 SBE Council Small Business Technology Use Survey, found that 92% of small sellers report that the company charges a fair price for its services, Moreover, 86% report that Amazon provides their company with significant support in reaching and servicing customers.

The lawsuit assumes that small business sellers are forced on the platform because their options are limited, which neglects actual facts and how the modern marketplace is working. Small businesses are omni-channel sellers because consumers are buying things in many different ways. They are leveraging different channels and marketplaces to “meet customers where they are” and are more successful at some channels than others due to their niche markets and customer preferences.

According to SBE Council October 2025 Small Business Check Up and Tech Use Survey, 91% of small business owners report that they market or sell across multiple channels, with social media and their business websites as leading platforms. These channels are complemented by instant messaging, in-person events, their own storefronts, and an array of other strategies.

In addition, 30% of multi-channel firms added new sales channels during the past year, reflecting continuous experimentation, adaptation, and the movement and preference of customers.

Indeed, while Amazon is important to many small sellers who use the platform, every channel that generates sales is important for small businesses. Again, Amazon is hardly the lone avenue for product sales in the wide, dynamic retail marketplace. As noted in the April 2025 Small Business Technology Use survey, the mean share of sales generated by small sellers on Amazon is 22.9%. (According to the survey, 26% of small businesses sell on Amazon.)

Moreover, Amazon is boosting profit margins for small sellers – the mean per-product profit margin for a sale on Amazon is 28.5%. And on this point, 47% of small sellers report that their Amazon profit margins are higher compared to other sales channels (41% note that their Amazon profit margin is about the same.)

So, on the Amazon front, Khan has it totally wrong. But on most fronts during Khan’s tenure, the FTC fell short of integrating market realities, relevant economic data, and the real experiences of small businesses into its policy actions. Khan had her playbook and her ideology, which has now  – unfortunately – moved north.

In the end, NYC will ultimately (hopefully!) survive the imminent policy mugging. It will certainly come at a huge cost. The broader U.S. business sector is still digging out from Khan’s FTC reign, and the current Chair has an opportunity to make a clean break from what’s left of these misguided and costly pursuits to ensure the national economy suffers no further. After all, Khan has revealed her true colors and ideology – both in practice at the FTC, and now in joining Mamdani at the hip to help build his socialist utopia.

The Trump administration should have none of it.

Karen Kerrigan is President & CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.