Todd Lappin/CreativeCommons License
Green Apple Books in San Francisco is one of millions of small businesses under threat in the coronavirus crisis.
Small businesses are in free fall. Shuttered by the pandemic, local retailers and restaurants have seen sales plummet, in many cases to zero. During every other major disaster in memory—the financial crisis, 9/11, the Great Depression—these sales dropped, but they did not flatline. Main Street businesses are looking into an abyss and it’s not at all clear how far it is to the other side or how they can possibly build a bridge to get there. Most have only enough cash reserves to survive for a few weeks.
Their fate hinges on the emergency stimulus bill that Congress is negotiating this weekend. The stakes are massive. Without a substantial and rapid infusion of cash, many small businesses will have little choice but to shutter for good. If large numbers of local retailers, restaurants, service providers, and other small businesses go under, that would send millions of people to the unemployment lines and wipe out any hope of staving off a deep economic depression. It would lead to the dissolution of a broad swath of the nation’s productive capacity and precipitate a sudden and unparalleled wave of market consolidation, handing corporations like Amazon and Walmart even more economic power. And it would leave all of us who are sheltering in place facing the bleak prospect of finally emerging from our homes only to find that many of the places we most love, the very fabric of our neighborhoods, have vanished.
As recently as a few days ago, many members of Congress had yet to grasp the scope of this unfolding calamity. As they began outlining what a major stimulus bill needed to do for Main Street, both Republican and Democratic leaders focused on offering loans. “If you’re a small business suddenly facing cash flow problems, we’d allow you to apply for low-interest loans,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said in a speech on Tuesday. The Trump administration, meanwhile, proposed a short-term loan program run out of the U.S. Treasury (administered by Goldman Sachs, unbelievably).
But small businesses aren’t facing run-of-the-mill cash-flow problems. They’re dealing with a sudden and catastrophic loss of income, which could extend for months. Taking on a bunch of debt is not a solution. In fact, saddling small businesses with hefty loan payments could cripple their ability to meet future expenses, leaving them at significant risk of failure and default.
“It’s terrifying,” says Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books in San Francisco, reflecting on the unprecedented predicament his 52-year-old business is facing. With Green Apple’s three stores shuttered, sales are down by about 80 percent. For now, employees are processing a small stream of online orders from home, relying on a wholesaler to ship books directly to customers. The incoming revenue falls far short of what’s needed to cover a weekly payroll of about $25,000 for a staff of 40, including 30 unionized booksellers and 10 managers. “I would take on some debt certainly,” Mulvihill says. But profit margins at independent bookstores like his average only about 1 percent, leaving very little room to service debt. And as much as Mulvihill hates the idea of laying people off, taking on debt to pay people when there’s no work would only put Green Apple Books at even greater risk of failure than it already is.
As more people have begun to reckon with what’s under way, support for a very different policy approach has begun to gather momentum in Congress. Instead of offering loans, some members on both sides of the aisle have put forward proposals to provide small businesses with sizable grants to cover payroll for the next few months. Republican senator Marco Rubio has a bill that would allow small businesses to borrow from the Small Business Administration (SBA), but any portion of the loan they spend paying their existing staff during a four-month period between March 1 and July 1 would be forgiven.
On the Democratic side, Senators Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley, and Chris Van Hollen have offered a broadly similar plan, but with a few key differences. In addition to payroll, their proposal would cover rent and health insurance for small businesses, and it would be administered by the Treasury Department, which some believe is better equipped than the SBA to quickly scale a program of this size.
Such a robust role for government in sustaining employment is a foreign concept in contemporary American politics. (Indeed, it’s quite similar to the strategy that Denmark has adopted. To prevent mass layoffs, the Danish government has told companies impacted by the virus that it will pay up to 75 percent of their employees’ wages.) But, like direct cash payments to all Americans, it’s an idea that makes a lot of sense in the gravity of this moment. Giving small businesses the funds to keep their staff employed and their location viable will be vastly less costly in the long run than allowing an avalanche of unemployment and lost productive infrastructure. It will also make it much easier to restart the economy once our lives begin to return to normal.
Acting quickly to adopt this approach would enable millions of business owners a path out of the current crisis. “This is a desperate fight for survival,” Sandy Grodin, who owns El Paso Office Products in El Paso, Texas, told me on Friday. His customers are mainly public-sector institutions, including school districts and universities, all of which are closed. His sales have fallen to zero. “I am doing all I can to maintain payroll,” he says. He’s told his staff of 17 that he’s trying to keep their health care coverage going indefinitely, but he can’t guarantee that they’ll have paychecks after the end of the month.
Hillary Guttman, who owns Laurel Street Bakery in New Orleans, is facing the same dilemma. Guttman opened her business a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit. Her bakery survived the floods, and later, the BP Oil spill. “This is different than all those other scenarios,” she says. “It’s really tough.” Under city order, the store is closed except for takeout. Sales are down nearly 70 percent. “I’m staying open just to be able to pay my employees,” Guttman says. She’s not paying herself and has no idea how she’ll pay rent and utilities. “That’s ten days from now,” she adds.
