The U.S. Chamber of Commerce held its annual State of American Business briefing Tuesday (1/11), and Chamber President/CEO Suzzane Clark focused on the benefits competition brings, demonstrated most dramatically last year in “the race for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Who won? Humanity…with multiple vaccines and drugs made widely available, saving millions of lives and providing millions of people our best defense yet against the pandemic.”
She cited a recent Small Business Index survey by the Chamber and MetLife which found small business owners across the country expressing the highest levels of optimism since the start of the pandemic. TJ Douglas, who owns a Boston wine shop, responded to a question about why he was optimistic: “Does it take too long to get wine from Napa Valley to Boston? Yes. But, the constant innovation in packaging, delivery, and logistics is helping us keep up.”
She assailed Biden Administration policies, including “a sweeping executive order based on the false premise that our entire economy is overconcentrated and stagnant.
Modern-day “trust-busters” on Capitol Hill—from both parties—think all big is bad and necessarily a threat to small … when in fact, our economy is an ecosystem where big business depends on small companies and vice versa. They are each other’s vendors, suppliers, customers, and partners. And they each employ the consumers who keep the whole system afloat,.” she said.
She also denounced the Federal Trade Commission’s stance against mergers and acquisitions, saying, “small and medium-sized businesses fear they’ll have worked for years to build something and have no exit strategy if they choose to sell. The FTC has a really important job to do in stopping anticompetitive behavior that harms consumers. But it can’t do that job if instead it is trying enlarge its powers to, as its new Chair has actually said, “shape the distribution of power and opportunity across our economy.”
Seventy percent of American voters think our nation’s highest priority is keeping businesses on their feet so they can move our country forward, she said, adding there’s a reason the public deems business the most competent and the most trusted of institutions.
Government can’t do what business does. It can’t take the kinds of risks businesses can. It can’t operate at the speed of innovation. It can’t create wealth or prosperity or new job opportunities; it can only redistribute them.
With 11 million jobs unfilled, she called for doubling the number of people legally immigrating to the U.S., creating a permanent solution for the “dreamers,” and removing barriers that prevent parents from accessing affordable childcare, formerly incarcerated individuals who have paid their debt to society and individuals struggling with addiction.
The U.S. and China are competing for global leadership, Clark said, and “by one vital measure—trade—we’re standing still. And that means we’re falling behind.
“While other economies race to ink new deals, the U.S. has not entered an agreement with a new trade partner in a decade. And the current administration—consumed by caution and internal reviews—is doing little to change that. In fact, it has yet to embrace even relatively uncontroversial initiatives such as a trade agreement with the UK, our closest ally.
“But Europe is charging ahead. The EU has 46 trade agreements with 78 countries. The U.S. has just 14 trade agreements with 20 countries—and the trend for our tariffs has been up, not down.”
As for China, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership—a massive China-led trade pact that covers all of East Asia—means better access to some of the world’s fastest growing markets for businesses from Korea and Japan to Indonesia and Vietnam. The U.S. is on the sidelines, she said, having pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.