Local businesses were just reemerging from a catastrophic pandemic when a one-two punch of tariff sanctions and geopolitical uncertainty posed new challenges.
Yet, as bad as the COVID crisis proved for Main Street, a legacy of resilience is helping businesses survive anew, former Small Business Administration chief Isabel Guzman told the National Press Foundation’s Local Business Journalism Fellowship.
Guzman, who oversaw a massive $1.2 Trillion pandemic relief program during her tenure in the Biden administration, said the COVID-era of social distancing and quarantines inadvertently forced small businesses to organize, collaborate and adapt — all qualities that are being put to new use as they navigate the Trump administration’s tariff regime and supply chain disruptions triggered by the Iran war.
During COVID, Guzman said business rallied to “create new entities” and “re-imagined” their venues.
“The restaurateurs came together in an interesting way. And even in your local communities and neighborhoods, people started creating, whether it was a WhatsApp chat or just a convening of sorts so that they could share information. So I do believe that this is a moment of strengthened resilience for our small businesses,” Guzman said.
A key focus of her tenure was reversing a long-term decline in “business dynamism”—the rate of new business births outpacing deaths — another troubling feature of the pandemic.
“One in five (small businesses) will fail within the first couple years, half of them within five years, two-thirds within that 10-year mark,” Guzman said. “And so the business dynamism had been on the decline. We were losing that spirit of entrepreneurship.
“So I was really trying to focus on ensuring that we could strengthen that interest in entrepreneurship… And so I do think that as those things have recovered, businesses are in a little bit, small businesses are in our economy overall, is in a little better situation from that perspective.”
Access the full transcript here.
This fellowship is sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a continuation of a journalism training and award program launched in 2025.
