Billions Ripped from Minority-Owned Firms Under Trump [Video]

By Stacy M. BrownBlack Press USA Senior National Correspondent

The Trump administration is dismantling the very programs created to correct generations of systemic racism and economic exclusion—programs that helped level the playing field for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and women entrepreneurs. In a series of targeted assaults, Trump has moved to destroy the federal government’s most effective tools for uplifting historically disadvantaged communities, threatening billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs. In the most devastating move yet, Trump’s Justice Department filed to end the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program, a nearly $37 billion affirmative action initiative that for decades guaranteed at least 10 percent of federal transportation contracts would go to minority- and women-owned firms. The administration now claims the DBE program violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, siding with two White-owned companies that sued because they didn’t want to compete with firms led by people of color.

If approved, the settlement would kill the DBE’s founding mission—to …