From the Star Tribune, Neal St. Anthony, April 17, 2017

Devee McNally, the founder in 1990 of St. Paul's MadeSmart, regrets that vote last November for President Donald Trump . 

"I'm a businesswoman and I gave him credit for building a brand," said the owner of the design-distribution company that makes plastic organizers for home and office. "But I just pray this 'border tax' doesn't go through.

"This could put me out of business. My priority should be building my company. I thought my bumpy years were over."

In January, Trump embraced the so-called "border adjustment tax" contained in the House Republicans' tax bill, essentially a 20 percent tax on imports, as a way to protect American manufacturers and possibly finance the Mexican border wall and tax cuts that opponents say tilt toward the rich.

McNally, whose business has grown to 25 employees and $25 million in sales last year, is part of a business group, Americans for Affordable Products, opposing the Republican plan that was conceived as pro-business growth. Trump, who has reversed numerous stances that helped him win election with his sky-is-falling, anti-immigrant, anti-trade campaign, was dancing around the border tax last week." 

From the Retail Dive, Daphne Howland, April 21, 2017

"Brick-and-mortar records stores are not only surviving the digital music era, but finding growth opportunities to open many new stores nationwide, according to the Associated Press. The industry on Saturday celebrates its 10th annual "Record Store Day," in which stores across the country hold music events and special releases.

After nearly 50 years in business, record store chain Tower Records shuttered in 2006, and the number of independent record stores dwindled to some 2,000 in the U.S. But in the past five years their numbers have grown again to about 2,400, Wes Lowe, an executive at wholesale CD, DVD and vinyl record distributor Alliance Entertainment Corp., told the AP.

Many of the stores are in smaller towns, and much of the business is driven by a resurgence of vinyl record sales, according to the report. Vinyl album sales have risen from annual sales of fewer than one million in 2005 to more than 13 million last year, according to Nielsen Music research cited by the AP.

The endurance of independent record stores is akin to the survival of independent bookstores, which have similarly survived two decades of disruption from Amazon. Their numbers, too, have increased in recent years; both bookstores and record stores have found ways to compete by hosting local events at stores and positioning store staff as helpful experts. Bookstores and record stores also benefit from the surprisingly successful and enduring "buy local" movement.

Indeed, some of those muscles were first tested by big-box retail, which well before the digital streaming era forced smaller stores to become stronger and more efficient, says Chris Brown, chief financial officer at New England record store chain Bull Moose. As the executive in charge of marketing, Brown was also one of the retail store employees who 10 years ago conceived of "Record Store Day" as an opportunity to demonstrate the value of brick-and-mortar stores as places to gather and shop. (Brown is also CFO at "lean retail" firm Fieldstack, which has made a business of algorithm-based commerce solutions first conceived at Bull Moose.)

"The press was predicting doom and record executives were gloomy, but that wasn't our reality," Brown told Retail Dive. "Independent stores resilient enough to survive big-box competition in the 1990s used those efficiencies to take advantage of the chaotic 2000s."