By james art With less than a week before the election, the Biden-Harris administration still has surrogates to prove its track record on the economy.
Isabel Casillas Guzman, head of the US Small Business Administration (SBA) and a member of President Biden’s cabinet, traveled to Durham on Tuesday to highlight North Carolina’s small business growth under Biden and Harris and meet with local businesses leaders to offer available resources entrepreneurs through SBA. The visit concluded with a roundtable discussion with Mayor Leonardo Williams and Operation HOPE founder and CEO John Hope Bryant, hosted at NC Central’s School of Business.
The state of the economy is a hot topic this election cycle. Biden, and now Vice President Harris, have struggled to make a winning issue of their economic performance while on the campaign trail, even though inflation has eased, unemployment is relatively low and September’s jobs report defied expectations. Guzman began his remarks with a stark rebuke of the negative narrative.
“The economic recovery in this country is strong,” Guzman said. “Sentiment is strong right now, but in terms of the actual data, our economy has performed really strongly.” Small businesses are really the ones charging this.”
More than 630,000 new small businesses in North Carolina have been filled with the SBA in the past four years. According to Guzman, black and Latino businesses are at the forefront of the small business “boom.” SBA lending to black-owned small businesses has tripled under the Biden-Harris administration, while Hispanic-owned small businesses have seen 2.5 times more loans. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room and Kate’s Korner used SBA loans to start and expand their operations.
“We’re finally getting back to a time, after 10 years of decline, where our new business startups are outpacing the closings, where you’re seeing jobs created by young businesses,” Guzman said. “The recession was scary for our country and our future because you can’t build an economy without strong entrepreneurship.”
According to the SBA website, “most manufacturing companies with 500 employees or fewer and most non-manufacturing businesses with average annual revenues of less than $7.5 million will qualify as small businesses.” Two-thirds of the 16 million new jobs created by 2021 nationwide will come from small businesses, with the number of jobs created by minority entrepreneurs growing.
But investment in these entrepreneurs remains unfair. Lack of available start-up capital limits potential revenue growth, limiting opportunities for minority firms to compete in the marketplace. Guzman emphasized the SBA’s focus on ensuring that “check writers look like the businesses seeking financing.”
“The fact is, it’s the exact same people — women, black founders, brown founders — who are underinvested in this economy,” Guzman said. “They can’t achieve the same job creation if they don’t have the capital available to really take their business to the next level.”
Minority populations are on track to become the majority within the decade, but Bryant, who has served as an adviser to three US presidents, worries that those same minority groups are missing out on building long-term generational wealth. He was blunt about financial literacy being “the civil rights issue of this generation.”
“We confuse cash flow with making money,” Bryant said.
Bryant’s team at Operation HOPE created a tool to track credit scores by zip code across the country. Credit ratings are used to assess whether a person qualifies for personal or business loans. According to Bryant, the average credit score for black Americans in the United States is 620, the lowest of any group in America. Operation HOPE works with big businesses like Spotify and Dow Jones to bridge the financial gap in under-resourced communities.
“Even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to raise it like a capitalist first,” Bryant said.
Mayor Williams on stage with a member of the Biden-Harris administration should come as no surprise. Residents are used to seeing pictures of Williams standing shoulder to shoulder with federal officials in the run-up to and before the election.
Williams brought the issue of home economics to the Durham audience. He said revitalizing historic neighborhoods like Hayti and Black Wall Street and providing opportunities for Durham’s youth are high priorities. Williams highlighted the city’s collaboration with Durham Technical Community College, calling the school “an engine for workforce development” and said building partnerships with groups like Operation HOPE will create new opportunities for Durham residents who are ready to take advantage of them. .
“If you come to Durham, live in Durham and say I want to make a living for myself and my family, then I want to make sure you know where the resources are to make that happen,” Williams said. “I want to make sure that all you have to do is put in the effort. Resources shouldn’t be hard to find or hard to reach, and that’s why we’re here today.”
Carline Jules, a single mother, said during the Q&A that one of her biggest regrets is not teaching financial literacy to her son Jaden, a former Riverside High student who now works for the investment firm Dow Jones. She pressed Williams and Bryant about the need to teach financial literacy to the city’s youth after hearing about a program Dow Jones plans to launch with Operation HOPE, where students will have free access to Wall Street Journal, that Dow Jones owns and guidance on how to understand the financial insights offered by the paper.
Bryant was surprised to hear a reference to the program, which has yet to officially launch, but was captivated enough by Jules’ story to pledge a $100,000 donation on the spot WSJ subscriptions and made Durham the pilot school system for the first-of-its-kind program, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.
After Bryant’s proposal, Williams said there will be more speakers and more resources in Durham in the future.
“This series will ensure that every single person in this city, if you want, if you put in the effort, has access to every resource you need to be successful in your own right,” Williams said. “But if you are lazy, then you will be allergic to this commotion.”
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