ALMOST A THIRD OF SMALL BUSINESSES IN NY, NJ REMAIN SHUT

In New York State, 27.8 percent of small businesses have been closed since the economic shutdown began; in New Jersey, the percentage is 31.2 percent, according to figures compiled on 16 November by Harvard University’s TrackTheRecovery.org, a database tracking damage wrought by the pandemic and economic shutdown. 
The New Jersey number exceeds an estimate from the state’s Business and Industry Association, which reported that 28 percent of the Garden State’s small businesses were shuttered on 31 October, the Star Ledger newspaper reported. 
The proportion of businesses still shut is an improvement over the mid-April height of the shutdown’s damage, when 52.5 percent of New York’s small businesses 
More than half of small businesses in both states were forced to shut their doors in the spring at the height of the pandemic, with both hitting highs in mid-April – 52.5 percent of New York businesses and 53.9 percent in the Garden States, government estimates say.
TREND FORECAST: As we have written in the Trends Journal since politicians launched the COVID War, large multinationals across the globe were allowed to proceed on a business-as-usual basis while small operators throughout the retail and service sector were deemed too-small-to-do business. 
And now, as we had forecast, there are rising protests and demonstrations, particularly in western nations, against politician’s draconian lockdown COVID mandates that favor the Bigs over the smalls. This in turn will serve as another platform in newly forming “populist,” “nationalist” “freedom” parties that will challenge establishment parties.