Business Resource Center

The Hill (5/4, Axelrod) reported President Trump on Saturday tweeted, “There is nothing easy about a USA Infrastructure Plan, especially when our great Country has spent an astounding 7 trillion dollars in the Middle East over the last 19 years, but I am looking hard at a bipartisan plan of 1 to 2 trillion dollars. Badly needed!” The Hill noted that his tweet comes “days after Democratic congressional leaders said they reached an agreement with the president to seek a deal on a $2 trillion infrastructure bill.”

In a Best of the Web piece for the Wall Street Journal (5/2, Subscription Publication) James Freeman wrote that small firms continued to hire workers and raise wages through April, according to the NFIB Small Business Jobs Report. Freeman noted that small businesses added a net 0.32 employees for April, which he said was a healthy pace. Freeman added the NFIB report indicated continued strong demand for both skilled and unskilled labor, with employers investing more time in employee training.

The Washington Post (4/26, Long) reported that the Commerce Department on Friday reported “the U.S. economy expanded at a strong 3.2 percent annualized rate from January through March...blowing past expectations and causing elation among President Trump and his advisers, even though some economists warn that growth was high because of companies’ beefing up their inventories and a smaller trade deficit, factors unlikely to persist.”

CNN (4/17, Depillis) reported, “Last month, McDonalds — the most recognizable name in America’s lowest-paying industry — announced it would no longer lobby against minimum wage hikes. A few months before that, Amazon proclaimed that it would fully meet activists’ demands for a $15-per-hour baseline and that it would throw its considerable lobbying weight behind an increase in the federal floor. Then, just last week, Bank of America outdid them both, setting its own minimum at $20.” CNN quotes Jon Kurrle, vice president of federal government relations at the NFIB saying, “We’re playing defense on this one, to state the obvious. A larger company can absorb costs in a way that a smaller business can’t, and also make technology investments in a way that not all small businesses can.”

Inc. Magazine (4/19) reported “Data from the National Federation of Independent Business’s (NFIB’s) quarterly Small Business Economic Trends report” indicated that, “a net 41 percent of business owners expected business conditions to keep improving” in January 2018.

The Wall Street Journal (5/10, Subscription Publication) editorialized that while Democrats assert that the budgets of Democratic states are being adversely affected by GOP economic policies, most states, including ones with Democratic governors, saw more tax revenue due to increasingly better economic conditions that are attributable to tax reform and less regulation.

The AP (5/10) reported the Labor Department announced Friday that the consumer price index rose two percent in the year ending in April, with prices increasing 0.3 percent in April, “led by more expensive gasoline, apartment rents and appliances.” The AP said, “The figures suggest inflation is mostly subdued, despite solid economic growth and rising wages, which typically push up prices.” Fed policymakers “took note of low inflation at their meeting last week, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell attributed it mostly to ‘transitory’ factors.”

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal (5/12, Subscription Publication) highlighted increasing federal tax revenues as some good news about the federal budget despite an increasing deficit. The Journal wrote that according to the Congressional Budget Office, revenues were up two percent in April, with payroll tax revenue up 4.7 percent due in part to rising employment and wages.

In a front-page analysis, the New York Times (5/11, A1, Peters) asserted that “as 21 candidates compete to become the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2020, Mr. Trump is running on the strongest economy of any president seeking re-election since Bill Clinton in 1996, and arguably since Richard M. Nixon in 1972,” and “if the economy remains strong, it could be Mr. Trump’s best argument as he tries to replicate his narrow path to victory in the Electoral College in 2016.” The Times added that Trump’s “message of a thriving economy – assuming that Mr. Trump sticks to it, as aides and allies have been urging him to do – could leave Democrats especially vulnerable when coupled with Republicans’ relentless attacks on their rivals as radicals who hold extreme positions on health care, abortion and the environment.” However, the Times acknowledged, “Whether Mr. Trump is disciplined enough to stay on message about the economy is another question.”

CNN (5/11, Byrd, Mattingly) reported that so far this year in the Congress, “there’s been no progress toward reaching a budget agreement or extending the federal government’s ability to borrow before September, when the money runs out.” CNN adds that Secretary Mnuchin “has called for lawmakers to raise the debt limit as soon as possible.”

The Wall Street Journal (5/12, Yerak, Subscription Publication) reported almost one-third of small businesses who applied for credit in 2018 used online lenders, who can approve transactions faster and require less collateral than traditional banks. New digital lenders including Square impose a variety of fees for their services, including taking a percentage of credit card sales or simply charging a flat rate.

The AP (5/1, Rosenberg) reported that National Small Business Week, which will be held from May 5 to May 11, is the SBA event “used...as a showcase for its Small Business Person of the Year awards.” The article added that SBA officials “have long used Small Business Week events to tout the ways their policy has helped companies.”

The Baton Rouge (LA) Advocate (5/5) reported in its Business Brief that NASA is hosting a “conference designed to help small businesses earn contracts with NASA and its prime contractors” on June 13 at the University of New Orleans University Center. During the conference, NASA “officials will teach businesses how to secure supplier, subcontractor and service provider contracts with government agencies and large corporate suppliers.” Participants will also “connect one-on-one and earn exclusive access to prime contractors.”

ZDNet (4/23, Gagliordi) reported Salesforce announced Tuesday a series of new AI-powered “productivity features in Sales Cloud that aim to streamline administrative tasks for sales reps,” which will be generally available on June 17th. The latest Sales Cloud update focuses “on features that make access to information and collaboration more efficient,” such as the new Einstein-powered Inbox Now app, which allows sales reps to “integrate account, contact, and meeting information directly into their calendar.” Salesforce Product Management SVP Robin Grochol wrote, “With these new productivity features, we’re managing the flow of information so that what you need is surfaced when you need it, all within Sales Cloud.”

Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President, Oracle Marketing Cloud, posted at MarTech Advisor (4/26) about the capability of “integrated next-generation solutions” to use consumer data in real time to “capture and act on behavior as it’s happening...including all activities pre-sale (i.e. correct size, wrong color) to send browse recovery messaging when the item is back in stock or promote complementary items.” Seth writes that marketers also “can see and act on all post-sale activity, all cart activities (i.e. add, remove, view and purchase), and all rich media activity (i.e. play, pause, fast-forward).” Still, “None of this is easy to do. There is no one-size-fits-all platform.”

The Wall Street Journal (5/12, Simon, Subscription Publication) reported job growth at companies with fewer than 20 workers has fallen to the lowest level in nearly eight years as they struggle to both attract and keep employees in the current job market, growing by less than 1% in March and April. According to the article, hiring at these smallest businesses had not been so low since the US was recovering from the financial crisis.

In an analysis, the AP (5/10, Alonso-Zaldivar) said that the Administration is “arguing in court that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down as unconstitutional,” even though “at the same time, Justice Department lawyers recently suggested that federal judges could salvage its anti-fraud provisions, raising questions about keeping other parts as well.” The AP said President Trump offered “more mixed messages” last week when he “floated to a Democratic lawmaker that he’d like to revive her legislation shoring up the health law’s insurance markets.” According to the AP, analyst Timothy Jost said the Administration” may be undercutting its own legal argument that the 9-year-old statute, President Barack Obama’s health care law, is so flawed it must be overturned entirely.”

The New York Times (5/2, Casselman) reported that long-awaited wage growth is “being fueled in part by recent minimum-wage increases in cities and states across the country.” Other factors included a “tightening labor market that is forcing employers to raise pay even for workers at the bottom of the earnings ladder.” However, “not everyone is benefiting equally,” as “African-American workers have seen smaller gains over the course of the recovery.” Economists have puzzled over why “the unemployment rate fell from 10 percent in 2009 to less than 5 percent in 2016” while “wages rose slowly” and are starting to theorize that the “job market wasn’t as good as the unemployment rate made it look.”

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal (5/2, Subscription Publication) said the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act is now impacting taxpayers in the states that took part, focusing on a plan by Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI) to tax businesses that employ low-income workers to cover Rhode Island’s expanding Medicaid rolls.

The New York Times’ (4/24, Tedeschi) “Upshot” blog reported the federal minimum wage, last adjusted to $7.25 an hour 10 years ago, is binding in 21 states. However, “elsewhere, many workers and employers are experiencing a minimum wage well above 2009 levels.” State, city, and county governments “have become far more active in setting their own minimum wages.” Averaging these wages means the effective minimum wage in the U.S. “will be $11.80 an hour in 2019. Adjusted for inflation, this is probably the highest minimum wage in American history.”