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Title 15 — Commerce and TradeRelease 119-73

§631a Congressional declaration of small business economic policy

Title 15 › Chapter CHAPTER 14A— - AID TO SMALL BUSINESS › § 631a

Last updated Apr 6, 2026|Official source

Summary

The federal government must use its programs and agencies to help small businesses survive and grow. It must coordinate federal actions so small businesses can compete, get the capital and resources they need at fair prices, face less economic concentration, and have chances for entrepreneurship and innovation. Federal departments and agencies must also create and keep policies that encourage private investment in small businesses. Those policies should help create jobs and support the good use of people and natural resources while fitting the nation’s other important needs.

Full Legal Text

Title 15, §631a

Commerce and Trade — Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)For the purpose of preserving and promoting a competitive free enterprise economic system, Congress hereby declares that it is the continuing policy and responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practical means and to take such actions as are necessary, consistent with its needs and obligations and other essential considerations of national policy, to implement and coordinate all Federal department, agency, and instrumentality policies, programs, and activities in order to: foster the economic interests of small businesses; insure a competitive economic climate conducive to the development, growth and expansion of small businesses; establish incentives to assure that adequate capital and other resources at competitive prices are available to small businesses; reduce the concentration of economic resources and expand competition; and provide an opportunity for entrepreneurship, inventiveness, and the creation and growth of small businesses.
(b)Congress further declares that the Federal Government is committed to a policy of utilizing all reasonable means, consistent with the overall economic policy goals of the Nation and the preservation of the competitive free enterprise system of the Nation, to establish private sector incentives that will help assure that adequate capital at competitive prices is available to small businesses. To fulfill this policy, departments, agencies, and instrumentalities of the Federal Government shall use all reasonable means to coordinate, create, and sustain policies and programs which promote investment in small businesses, including those investments which expand employment opportunities and which foster the effective and efficient use of human and natural resources in the economy of the Nation.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Codification Section was enacted as part of the Small Business Economic Policy Act of 1980, and not as part of the Small Business Act which comprises this chapter.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Effective Date

Section effective Oct. 1, 1980, see section 507 of Pub. L. 96–302, set out as an

Effective Date

of 1980 Amendment note under section 631 of this title.

Short Title

For

Short Title

of title III of Pub. L. 96–302, as the Small Business Economic Policy Act of 1980, see

Short Title

of 1980

Amendments

note set out under section 631 of this title.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

15 U.S.C. § 631a

Title 15 — Commerce and Trade

Last Updated

Apr 6, 2026

Release point: 119-73