He bet his life savings on paper straws. Trump may destroy his business.

The paper straw, Guy Spinelli was sure, would be the way of the future.

After 50 years toiling in the country’s paper mills, the 75-year-old plunked his life savings into creating a “24 hours strong” straw that he manufactures in Woodstock, and sells to more than 1,000 restaurants, bars, coffee shops and casinos.

But now, two years in, Spinelli says the party is over. President Donald Trump’s executive order last month calling to “end the use of paper straws” dealt a swift, decisive blow to his business, Boss Straw. Orders have stalled, even though the action only stopped purchases of paper straws by the federal government. Instead of selling $800,000 worth of straws this year, Spinelli fears it’ll be one-tenth of that.

“Our distributors are saying, ‘Everyone’s going back to plastic now because of the president,’” he said. “The president I voted for, the man who says ‘Let’s make America great again, let’s help small businesses grow,’ that man is going to put me out of business.”

The nascent U.S. paper straw industry, made up primarily of mom-and-pop businesses established in the past decade, is reeling from the White House’s directive against its products. The order doesn’t bar other companies from buying paper straws; it just asks for a vague “national strategy to end the use of” the product. But business owners like Spinelli say it’s sent a much larger message to Americans that paper straws are ineffective and unnecessary.

In his executive order, Trump says paper straws are “nonfunctional,” use harmful chemicals and are sometimes wrapped in plastic, “undermining the environmental argument for their use.”

“These things don’t work,” he said before signing the mandate on Feb. 10. “I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode. If something’s hot they don’t last very long — like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation, so we’re going back to plastic straws.”

The country’s paper straw industry, valued at about $600 million per year by market research firms, is relatively small. But while the president’s effort to end the “forced use of paper straws” doesn’t deal a particularly significant blow to the overall U.S. economy, economists say it is an example of how quickly the administration’s actions can upend conditions for businesses and consumers.

Trump has signed dozens of executive orders since he took office in late January.

“The president signed a seemingly narrow order to ban paper straw procurement by the federal government, but what consumers are internalizing is that paper straws are bad, period,” said John Mayo, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. “Not only does that distort buying decisions, but it has a ripple effect: Job losses, business closings. There’s a multiplier effect throughout the economy.”

The White House disputed the idea that Trump’s order was leading the charge against paper straws or that his actions were hurting U.S. businesses.

“This isn’t just a random petty issue picked by the president; it’s in response to normal people preferring plastic straws over paper,” a White House official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking. “The market (for paper straws) was already small — it’s a fad that tried to take off but didn’t because of an organic, free market lack of demand.”

A decade ago, there was just one paper straw maker in the United States: Aardvark, a Fort Wayne, Indiana, company that invented the paper straw in 1888 and restarted production in 2007. But it wasn’t until 2015, when a video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw wedged in its nose went viral, that demand took off. Suddenly the company had thousands of new clients and annual sales growth of 5,000%.

Responding to the initial public outcry, cities, states and entire corporations, including Starbucks, Royal Caribbean, Disney and American Airlines, began phasing out plastic straws, replacing them with paper and other biodegradable options. Still, paper straws could be a tough sell — people complained that they tasted “soggy” and fell apart quickly, making them a frequent target of jokes on late-night television.

But as demand grew, so did the number of homegrown businesses producing paper straws. Although there is no definitive count of the number of U.S.-based straw manufacturers, industry experts say at least a dozen have cropped up since the country’s first plastic straw bans went into effect in 2018, making inroads into a slice of manufacturing long dominated by China.

Karrie Laughton spotted a business opportunity seven years ago when she started looking for paper straws for her bar in Rochester, New York.

“I couldn’t find a good paper straw to save my life, and when I did find one made in the USA, there was a three-month wait,” she said. “I was like, ‘The world needs paper straws, so I’m going to make paper straws.’”

She and her mother refinanced their homes and a couple of rental properties to come up with the $400,000 it took to start Roc Paper Straws. They found a 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in upstate New York and filled it with $150,000 worth of machinery that can print custom straws. But between the COVID pandemic and the White House’s latest actions, Laughton says it’s been a struggle to stay afloat.

“At this point, we’re just trying to keep our doors open,” said Laughton, who voted for Kamala Harris. “We’re an American manufacturing company trying to show people that not all paper straws are bad. And then you have the president of the United States say, ‘All paper straws are bad, nobody likes them.’ How do you recover from that?”

Although some companies that sell paper straws also make other products such as environmentally friendly disposable plates or utensils, this is a particularly tough time for businesses like Laughton’s that focus entirely on one product. An industry that seemed like it was poised to boom just a few years ago, she said, has hit a roadblock.

“The straw is symbolic of what’s happening across the economy,” said Ayman ElTarabishy, a management professor at George Washington University and president of the International Council for Small Business. “The president is shaking up the status quo, and that’s forcing businesses to change the way they’ve been doing things. The market is shifting, rules are changing and it’s a disruptive time.”

But not all straw-makers are seeing sudden drops in sales. Some, like Brandon Leeds in Miami, say it’s been business as usual for the past few weeks. His company, SOFi Products, sells to more than 4,000 restaurants, cafés and bars across the country, including many that have affirmed their commitment to paper since Trump’s order.

“I think at this point people are aware of the fact that plastic is bad for the environment,” said Leeds, who co-founded the business with his brother in 2019. “People realize that it isn’t just about the environment anymore — it’s about microplastics ending up in their bodies, it’s about personal health.”

To complicate matters for manufacturers, the U.S. economy appears to be slowing after a growth streak in the wake of the pandemic. Americans, who until now have kept spending in the face of inflation and high borrowing costs, are beginning to pull back. Consumer spending fell in January, the first monthly drop in nearly two years, according to data released Friday. That has straw-makers on edge — cutbacks in coffee purchases and dining out mean there’s less use for their products, no matter what they’re made of.

Spinelli, the owner of Boss Straw in Illinois, is upset by all of it: The slowdown in demand, the extra plastic that will end up in landfills and, above all, the notion that paper straws are useless. He spent years, he says, ensuring his products could hold their own in any drink, hot or cold, while being compostable and complying with the Food and Drug Administration’s standards. He found a way to make them affordable, too, selling them for less than 2 cents apiece.

“Why doesn’t the president reach out to some of us manufacturers and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on with this straw business?’” said Spinelli, who voted for Trump in the last three elections. “I drink the same beverage he does — Diet Coke — and my straw lasts all day long.”

Spinelli spent $250,000 developing the three-layer prototype and $1.8 million on custom machinery. The specialized paper is smooth on the outside so it doesn’t irritate lips, but strong enough that it can punch through plastic lids and make it to the bottom of an ice-filled cup without disintegrating. Spinelli noted, Fox News host Jesse Watters once declared it “the best paper straw of all time” after a 24-hour on-air “water challenge.”

But if demand for paper straws withers away, he’s out of luck. The specialized machinery can’t churn out anything else, and the paper can’t be used for printing. He worries he’ll soon have to lay off all nine employees and file for bankruptcy, as more of his customers turn to cheaper plastic straws from China.