During his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama announced his goal to double U.S. exports within the next five years. It seems a laudable goal for a CEO-in-Chief. The economy has been pretty much in the tank since before Obama took office. The job market is only just starting to show some signs of life and the voting public is getting impatient. Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit is a major drag on our gross domestic product and it is costing American businesses quite a lot in lost profits. Getting the private sector to increase exports contributes to growth, generates jobs and, best of all, costs the taxpayer nothing. And, when it comes to increased exports, very naturally, the House Small Business Committee would want to ponder the implications for small businesses, which they did during a hearing held late last month. Small businesses make up about 98% of all exporting firms but only earn 30% of the revenues from exporting. That raised a few eyebrows right at the start.

On the one hand, there are already a lot of microbusinesses that export but they do so one sale at a time. On the other hand, participation in exporting (in the way that the government means when they discuss the subject) requires the business owner to become well versed in a complex morass of logistical issues, international customs requirements, overseas consumer protection product specifications and other relevant regulations. In addition, witness testimony established pretty clearly that diving into full-fledged exporting is the sort of thing a small business will do if its owner is interested in growth. Most microbusinesses are not much interested in growth — or, at least, not that kind of growth. That is particularly true if that growth brings a lot of administrative headaches with it. What that means, in the end, is that exporting will be an attractive growth strategy for medium sized firms but not for very many microbusinesses.