Small Business Administration (SBA) administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet and former SBA administrators Karen Mills, Hector Barreto and Aida Alvarez issued a blog urging Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the first trade deal to specially target some of the barriers that shut American small businesses out of international markets.  

The Administrators wrote: “Small businesses face exporting challenges in ways that their large competitors do not. American entrepreneurs want to export to Asia’s growing middle class, but foreign rules are often rigged against them. More American companies must gain access to Asian markets to better compete in the global economy. By 2030, 3.2 billion middle class consumers are projected to live in the Asia-Pacific region, one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing in the world. If the United States leads on trade by writing the rules for this fast-growing region, our small businesses will sell more abroad and support more good jobs here at home. Without TPP, other countries—often ones that do not share our values and interest—will write weaker rules that harm our small businesses, our workers, and our overall competitiveness.”

The entire TPP blog is available here.