“I’ve done everything I can to avoid a downgrade,” Mr. García Padilla said in an interview, calling the move “unjust.” “Maybe I can’t detain the winds right now, but I can build the windmills. I am an incurable optimist.”

But not everyone is applauding. His tax increases have hit some businesses hard, which could pose a further drag on the economy. Among the many taxes he initiated, the governor raised the corporate tax rate to a maximum of 39 percent. Last year, the economy continued on a slide. “The new administration has a bookkeeping mentality as opposed to an economic development mentality,” said Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in Congress and a political opponent of the governor. “Here you find Puerto Rico with an underlying economic problem charging its corporations — its job creators — 39 percent. Hello!”

Perhaps the most maligned is the new lucrative gross receipts tax, which some owners of small- and medium-size businesses say threatens to put them out of business. Because of the way the tax is structured, it affects companies with less than a 5 percent net profit margin. This means that many food-related companies, like supermarkets, and new businesses, are hit hardest. The smaller the margin, the higher the tax.

Some stores are paying an effective tax rate of 130 percent, said Manuel Reyes Alfonso, the vice president of a trade association that represents the food industry. If the tax is not revised, some will be forced to shut down and others will have to raise prices, he said.

“It is absurd,” said Mr. Reyes Alfonso. “It’s like selling the car to buy gas.”

In response, the governor is forming a committee to take a second look at the new taxes and the island’s complicated tax code. Waivers to the tax are available, but Mr. Reyes Alfonso said they were difficult to obtain.

As he sipped coffee in the bakery section of one of his stores, José Revuelta, the president of SuperMax grocery stores in Puerto Rico, said he managed to expand during the recession. But now, with the gross receipts and corporate tax cutting into his business, he is holding back on capital investments, raises and bonuses. He said he wanted reassurance that the tax hikes would be temporary.

“I can understand doing this on a short-term basis,” he said. “But there needs to be a plan.”

Not many are confident that a long-term plan exists to lift the island from such a sustained crash. But it cannot get much worse, they say.

“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to restore yourself,” said Mr. Soto, of the Center for a New Economy. “I’m hoping that’s what’s happening.”