Candidates Face-Off on Small Business
Obama signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which will help grow small businesses while protecting investors. Partnerships with businesses to launch Startup American give the promising high-growth entrepreneurs the financing and support to grow and hire new workers, Kaavl says.
The SBA, SCORE, online education and other offerings and organizations fill the training space nicely, Barretto says. Romney proposes looking at the training landscape to determine redundancies and then doing away with those programs.
Cross-Border Issues
2013 marks the end of a three-year pilot trade and export initiative called the State Trade and Export Promotion Program (STEP) is a 3-year pilot trade and export initiative. Federal grants and matching dollars from states fund the pilot, which was authorized by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. Its objective is to help increase the number of small businesses that are exporting and to raise the value of exports for those small businesses that are currently exporting.
The problem, according to Barretto, is the amount of red tape. EPA regulations, for example, are a concern. Its part of Gov. Romneys five-point plan to expand trade. He feels theres a tremendous amount of opportunity in Latin America. Unfortunately under this administration, there have been no new trade agreements, he says.
President Obama set a goal of doubling U.S. exports by 2015, and so far we are on track to meet that goal, Kaavl asserts. He signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, supporting tens of thousands of new American jobs. And he has fought to level the playing field for American businesses and their international competitorsand this is why he has taken action to stop unfair trading practices abroad, including in China. At the same time, he has expanded affordable capital and access to expertise to help small businesses export more overseas, Kaavl adds.
Hispanic-Owned Small Businesses
The most recent U.S. census shows huge growth in Hispanic-owned businesses, the number of which increased by 43.7 percent to 2.3 million, more than twice the national rate of 18.0 percent between 2002 and 2007.
Those statistics have caught the attention of both campaigns. Gov. Romney is aware that the fastest growing segment of small business in the United States is Hispanic business. They generate over $4 billion in revenue. They double every five years, says Barretto, who is also a chair of the Juntos con Romney initiative, the Hispanic Steering Committee.
