President Obama’s getting his insourcing groove on

Posted on | January 12, 2012 | Comments Off

President Obama meeting with National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, Jason Miller, Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy, and Senior Policy Advisor Jacob Leibenluft, in the Oval Office

President Obama hosted a forum on “Insourcing American Jobs” at the White House yesterday. According to the press release circulated, “The forum will focus on the increasing trend of insourcing – where companies are bringing jobs back to the United States and making additional investments here in America.”

Ain’t that swell?

The point of this exercise isn’t only to encourage companies to create jobs here in this country but also to make stuff here and export it there instead of making stuff there and selling it there, too. In other words, it’s about jobs but it’s also about imports and exports.

To make his point, President Obama invited a number of very large company representatives (Ford, DuPont, Siemens, Intel, Otis Elevator) that are still making stuff here as well as a few foreign giants (ThyssenKnapp, Rolls Royce) and a handful of small businesses. And there are policy goodies for the Administration to announce.

Specifically for small businesses, there is the SBA’s International Trade Loan program, which the President is directing to educate small businesses about their potential eligibility to participate in the program. What program? you may ask. This is (yet another) SBA loan program, for small businesses trying to access foreign markets or that are adversely impacted by imports.

Evidently, there aren’t many small businesses using this program. President Obama and SBA Administrator Karen Mills think that’s because not enough of us know about it. So now, the SBA is going to make a point of telling us about it and helping us with the loan applications.

Because everybody knows that’s just what we’re all sitting around here waiting to do: take out loans.

There will be further policy goodies proposed by the President. Specifically, he wants to create tax credits for companies that bring jobs home and otherwise invest in the U.S. and he wants to eliminate any tax goodies that go to companies outsourcing jobs. Assuming, for the moment, that he is able to get Congress to go along with this idea, this will be something else we can always count on.

Tax incentives and loans. Oh my!

Once again, we’re looking at policy goodies nominally aimed at small businesses that miss the mark with most of them. Microbusiness owners might be able to take advantage of the tax rewards for hiring in the U.S. (assuming Congress doesn’t do this through corporate taxes instead of a more general business tax provision) but most won’t apply for the loans because most (a) won’t know about them and (b) would assume they wouldn’t qualify, if they did know about them.

And, of course, the SBA isn’t going to be able to educate as many small business owners as they hope (I suspect) because I don’t see anything they’re doing that indicates they’re any better than all the SBAs before them that tried to reach out to us and failed.

I don’t begrudge these policy goodies to the small firms for which they will work. I’m just tired of hearing politicians talk about pro-small business economic policy that doesn’t help 95% of small businesses.

That and I wish politicians would put themselves to the trouble of trying to find out what small businesses really need before they start trying to craft policy. How would they do that?

Well, it’s like Elmo always says: the best way to find something out is to ask questions.

That and to be very careful about who you are asking. There’s a whole alphabet soup of so-called small business lobbying organizations in Washington and most of them have no clue about most small businesses (which is to say, microbusiness).

So, while President Obama is trying to get the corporate giants to create American jobs and the foreign corporate giants to invest in America and the rest of us to create jobs in America, he probably hasn’t thought about the fact that the majority of small business owners do create jobs in America — when they create jobs at all.

In fact, here is something I’ve been told by more than one small business owner: “Well, I’ve been told by others in the industry that I’d make more money if I had my [bluggedyblus] made in China but I’d rather keep those jobs in America.”

You think small business owners get credit for that? If they do, I haven’t heard about it.

With the upcoming Presidential campaign, it’ll be interesting to see whether President Obama tries to woo small businesses. I haven’t seen much for him to work with from this White House but I’m willing to keep an open mind.