The Trump-Harris debate overlooked the importance of small businesses

While hopes were high that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris would have a serious discussion on issues of critical importance to the American people, instead we saw nearly 90 minutes of personal attacks.

With recent polls indicating the economy is the biggest concern among voters, Harris and Trump have not spent enough time on the economic heart of this country: small business. The biggest economic question facing this country is how to keep small businesses thriving. The US Department of Commerce estimates that small businesses employ nearly half of the American workforce and account for 43.5% of America’s GDP ($25.44 trillion), but small businesses received very little attention during the Trump-Harris debate .

Inflation no longer means rising costs; higher costs are here to stay and destroy the profitability and long-term viability of small businesses. The next administration in Washington must have concrete plans for how to fix this by reducing the federal deficit and encouraging economic expansion organically by growing the private sector.

Both Trump and Harris didn’t know the details of how to fix the economy and tackle inflation. I haven’t heard of the negative impact inflation has had on small business revenue since the pandemic. Small business owners have faced shortages, rising fuel costs and rising minimum wage costs that hit small businesses harder than large corporations.

Neither candidate has talked about expanding access to capital for women-owned and minority-owned businesses. Kamala Harris could certainly talk about the increase in SBA loans and the current administration’s focus on supporting women-owned and minority-owned businesses. Trump should have discussed the success of SBA lending and the economic performance of small businesses during his tenure before the COVID pandemic crippled the economy. Each could have looked at a future where the government modernizes its processes and digitizes the processing of SBA loans. Technology can make the process more efficient and ultimately get financing more easily into the hands of small business owners.

Harris suggested boosting startup activity with a proposed $50,000 tax credit, but we already have a track record of creating small businesses and you need a profit before you can get a tax credit. Meanwhile, many business owners are now really struggling to make a profit due to higher costs.

What we need is the resilience and longevity of small businesses, as well as government policies such as lower taxes and less regulation to increase the chances that businesses will survive long enough to benefit from the proposed tax incentives.

Harris was also short on details about how the tax incentive program would work. How soon would it take effect? Could the program be launched without a cooperating Congress? These questions are on the minds of business owners when they hear such a proposal. If the government would modernize and improve its technology, this problem would be solved much faster. Public-private partnerships that are technology-driven and smarter must be on the next administration’s agenda. So far, I have not seen any proposal that gets to the heart of this problem.

Government must do better for small businesses. Delayed processing of Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERTCs) was one example of small businesses not getting what they need from the federal government. The IRS stopped processing new ERTC filings in September 2023, and many business owners are still waiting for their outstanding claims to be processed and paid. The rest took over a year and small businesses are still waiting for their money. Many of them cannot afford to wait much longer.

Biz2Credit recently helped a nonprofit serving small businesses in California who had been waiting over a year for the IRS to pay their credit. It’s really disappointing for the government to let big organizations down. Fixing bureaucratic failures must be a priority for the next administration, regardless of who wins the November election.

Small businesses have fared well under Trump, who has eased regulations that hindered lending to small businesses and overseen an economy with low inflation. We can assume that he will likely reintroduce policies, including tax cuts and less regulation, that benefited small businesses while he was in office. He didn’t talk about small businesses during the debate. Harris also should have highlighted the record small business creation and expansion of SBA loans during the current Biden-Harris administration.

Both candidates certainly want to help small businesses. Trump, famously, is a businessman, and Harris is a strong supporter of helping Americans — especially women and minorities — start and grow their businesses.

Whoever is elected must focus on boosting small business growth while also working to stem inflation, which has cut into small business earnings significantly over the past two years. A priority for the incoming US president is finding the right mix of monetary policy and reducing government spending to reduce inflation and help small businesses grow.