Joe Nocera, Columnist

Hoffman Equipment Had a Deal. Then Trump Happened.

Republicans’ efforts to stymie the Ex-Im Bank are damaging the kind of small business they used to champion.

June 6, 2018 at 4:01 PM UTC

Corrected

June 8, 2018 at 1:27 PM UTC

Joe Nocera is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the host and writer of the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

Tim Watters with the Cameroon minister of defense and the U.S. ambassador to Cameroon, upon delivery of 163 pieces of equipment.
Source: Tim Watters

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Hoffman Equipment Inc. is the kind of company politicians love to extol. Started as a trucking company in 1920 by two brothers, Bill and Harry Hoffman, it is now a dealership that sells heavy equipment like crushers and excavators. Its chief executive, 57-year-old Tim Watters, is Harry Hoffman’s grandson. The company has $75 million in annual revenue, 80 employees and a modest one-story headquarters in an industrial area of Piscataway Township, N.J. As family-owned small businesses go, it is a classic of the genre.

“Our domestic business has always been up and down,” Watters said the other day, as he and several Hoffman executives sat around a small table in his office. “Right now, it’s down. For us at least, this economy is tough.”