Small Business Act

European preference will be a key part of this debate, both on the MFF and on all the texts that we're pushing today at the European level.

The idea that when we're facing subsidized overcapacities from China coming to destabilize our companies on EVs, steel, chemicals, and so many sectors, when we see the Americans, and they didn't have to wait for Donald Trump, by the way, to do the Inflation Reduction Act, the Small Business Act, to do protectionism and support their own companies.

And we should not be naive and also defend our own and support our own innovators and champions.

Invest massively into our security, into our space sector, into our AI, all the areas that are absolutely critical for our strategic autonomy.

Yeah, great idea to start at the beginning, Ellie.

So the Small Business Act, currently codified at 15 USC Section 632 ETSAC, defines a small business concern as one that is independently owned and operated and, quote, not dominant in its field of operation.

This is a beautiful phrase, but completely unusable in like an operational test.

Right.

SBA proposes not to lower any of them, not one.

It proposes to hold every one of those industries harmless.

And the stated reasoning for that is that the Small Business Act's directive to aid, counsel, assist, and protect small business interests, plus the economic conditions of 2021 through 2024, you know, post-COVID, plus a concern about the benefit cliff, the idea that a firm approaching the threshold has a perverse incentive not to grow.

We don't want any of that,

So it's been almost four years.

And every five years, the Small Business Act requires the Small Business Administration to update these size standards.

And that makes sense.

A lot of times, they're done just by because of inflation, because as inflation changes, obviously, they want more updates as things get more expensive or hopefully cheaper.

It's taking industries and it's sort of merging them together.

And Congress actually came back and said, you can't do that.

They changed the Small Business Act and said, you can't do that anymore.

And so then we saw additional size standards come out at the five year that seemed more inflationary in their adjustments.