The Federal Reserve kicked off its rate-cutting cycle last week citing to easing inflation, but for small businesses, the pressure is still on. Most small business owners surveyed by the MetLife and U.S. Chamber of Commerce's third quarter Small Business Index name inflation as a top challenge.

Neil Bradley, the US Chamber of Commerce executive vice president and chief policy officer joins Brad Smith on Wealth! to take a look at Main Street and the impact of macroeconomic conditions on small business owners.

Bradley tells Yahoo Finance, “It really is kind of a tale of two cities if you will,” explaining that while the inflation remain top issues for small business owners, its the broader economy nationwide that’s the cause of concern, not the local economy. “They're concerned about the broad direction of the national economy, a little less concerned about their local economy. But then here's the other story that they're telling us when it comes to their individual business, they're incredibly bullish and optimistic…They're just worried about where we're going nationally.”

The expert reports that small business owners are looking for signs we've managed to beat inflation, that we're done with these rapid increases in prices, that we have more price stability going forward.” The small business owners are also “looking for more certainty out of Washington,” Bradley says. The survey showed that more small business owners were interested in the 2024 election than they were in the previous one. “When it comes to government, they're tired of the gridlock…three in four small business owners say that we need elected officials who want to compromise and resolve some of these contentious issues so that we have more policy certainty going forward.”

Bradley provides some perspective on how small businesses are approaching artificial intelligence (AI). “I think this is one of the great overlooked stories when it comes to artificial intelligence. We tend to think of these big established companies that are using AI, our own survey data, and round tables, focus groups that I've done with small business owners leads us to conclude that the actual edge use case are these small business owners. They're already figuring out how to use AI to improve their efficiency and bring tasks in-house.”

He also says the potential Longshoremen's union strike affecting roughly 45,000 port workers would negatively impact small businesses. “That's a huge supply chain disruption that's going to be inflationary. This is the type of unexpected shock that could really hurt businesses across the country, and especially on Main Street.”

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.