Project 2025 Would Redirect Minority Business Agency From Commerce Support to Free-Market Ideology
Project 2025's chapter on the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) proposes shifting the agency's mission from business development to 'policy analysis on the evils of socialism and Communism,' while maintaining that MBDA should prioritize 'private sector action over government action.' Although Congress made MBDA permanent in 2021, the proposal could reshape its budget and staffing through appropriations riders or executive orders tied to the Under Secretary's agenda.
The MBDA was created in 1969 under President Nixon to help minority-owned businesses — which by 2017 employed nearly 9 million workers and generated $1.7 trillion in economic output — navigate barriers to capital, contracts, and markets. Project 2025 would turn this proven job-creator into an ideological weapon. Instead of helping minority entrepreneurs access loans or win federal contracts, the agency would be tasked with producing propaganda about 'the evils of socialism and Communism' and pushing 'private sector action' as the only legitimate path. That is not economic policy; it is a taxpayer-funded lecture series.
A fair-trade, pro-worker approach would strengthen MBDA's core functions: connecting minority firms to global supply chains while ensuring those supply chains uphold enforceable labor standards. Rather than treating minority businesses as ideological foot soldiers, the government should expand the agency's capacity to analyze how trade deals and tariff policies actually harm these firms — for instance, by enabling the import of goods produced under forced labor or by concentrating contract awards among a handful of politically connected conglomerates. The real 'evil' is not socialism but a system that lets capital flee to the lowest-wage, worst-condition factories, leaving minority-owned firms and their employees on the sidelines.
The humanitarian alternative
Reauthorize and expand MBDA with a mandate to: (1) help minority-owned businesses meet enforceable labor and environmental standards in global supply chains; (2) partner with the Ex-Im Bank to offer climate-aligned export financing to minority exporters; (3) track forced labor and dumping impacts on minority suppliers; and (4) provide direct technical assistance for procurement and export readiness. Fund at $100 million annually, with performance metrics tied to job creation, wage growth, and supply-chain resilience.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 23: Export-Import Bank (pp 717-719)"— 684 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Establishes a Minority Business Advisory Council to advise the Under Secretary on supporting minority-owned businesses. MBDA was established in 1969 by President Richard Nixon under Executive Order 11458 4 as the Office of Minority Business Enterprise and the Advisory Council for Minority Business Enterprise. Its purpose was to strengthen and preserve minority business enterprises (MBEs) and to coordinate among MBEs and other groups such as state and local governments and trade asso - ciations. For over 50 years, the MBDA operated under executive order without clear congressional authorization, but was regularly recognized and promoted by every subsequent president, including Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. 5 MBDA has the appearance, on its face, of perpetuating racial bias by focusing on minority advancement rather than economic need or other criteria. This is why the Trump Administration proposed eliminating funding for the agency in 2017. Many conservatives ask why the government is funding this activity, which often amounts to business and management consulting services offered by private sect…"