Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Skittish Treasury Hobbles Small-Business Loan Plan

Main Street and the economy won’t get the help they need unless Mnuchin is willing to take more risks.

May 19, 2020 at 5:44 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

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The Trump administration is hampering a Federal Reserve lending program that could help keep small and mid-sized businesses afloat during the coronavirus recession. To correct that mistake, the U.S. Treasury Department needs to allow the program to take more risks.

There are troubling signs that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn’t see it this way. His testimony before a key Senate committee Tuesday morning reinforced this.