Democrats finally got to a policy discussion on the third night of their convention, even though their pitch to small-business voters didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio interviewed a couple whose business has struggled during the pandemic. “You are kind of forgotten, right?” Brown asked rhetorically. “The president always bragging about the stock market sort of leaves a lot of small manufacturing companies behind.”
Small manufacturers such as the one this Ohio couple operates actually got a lifeline from the federal government through the Paycheck Protection Program. The government provided months’ worth of capital to keep workers employed, at the very least, even if operations couldn’t continue due to local and state laws.
Businesses have struggled during the pandemic because governments started to impose lockdowns limiting nonessential business activity. It has nothing to do with the president’s words about the market.
It doesn’t require the scientific method to realize that lockdowns have been the source of hurt for businesses. Look at any economy in Western Europe, and you’ll see it suffering more than the United States because of lockdowns. During the second quarter, the U.S. shrank much less than our European friends, which locked down more of their economies and for longer. The U.S. shrank by 9.5% during the second quarter. Germany shrank by 10.1% and Spain by 18.5%. France shrank by 13.8% and Italy by 12.4%. The United Kingdom contracted by an astonishing 20.4% in the second quarter. Where lockdowns were looser, jobs were undoubtedly saved.
Democrats have already blamed COVID-19 deaths on Trump during the convention. Their strategy is to implicate Trump, who was not the key decision-maker in imposing lockdowns, in the economic suffering of small businesses. It’s a political argument but not a logical one.
