An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Friday names several federal agencies he effectively intends to shut down, including a minority business department falsely portrayed by white conservatives as discriminatory toward white people.
The executive order lays out Trump’s plans to axe seven government entities, including the Minority Business Development Agency, saying they each “shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
The other agencies on the list are the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution; the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund; and the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America news organization. My MSNBC colleague Steve Benen wrote a great piece about Trump’s gutting of VOA and his broader attack on pro-democracy media outlets.
The Minority Business Development Agency was created during the Richard Nixon administration and has a self-described mission “to promote the growth and global competitiveness of Minority Business Enterprises in order to unlock the country’s full economic potential.” Such programs have been under assault by white conservatives for some time, and Trump’s closure of the agency can plausibly be seen as part of his perverse vow to address “anti-white feeling” as president, despite it not existing in any systemic form.
A year ago, I wrote about a Trump-appointed judge’s ruling that the program, which helps minority-owned businesses that have long faced discrimination and marginalization, must serve white people because it was effectively discriminating against them. And last week, I wrote about the Trump administration’s demand that the city of Asheville, North Carolina, amend its Hurricane Helene draft recovery plan to remove a reference to assistance for businesses owned by minorities and women.
This entirely predictable scenario, in which Trump and his allies kneecap key government programs meant to aid nonwhite people, is precisely why I took an interest in reporting on Black philanthropy while writing for The ReidOut Blog back in 2021. Private giving and intra-communal investment among nonwhite people is not, in my view, an effective stand-in for the federal aid that minority-owned businesses deserve. Especially since minority-focused philanthropic organizations have faced “lawfare” from white conservatives, too.
But philanthropy and private investment are likely to become even more vital for minority-owned businesses under a Trump administration apparently dead set on dismantling federal tools that help these businesses survive and thrive.
