The treasury secretary said Amazon ‘destroyed the retail industry’ – but Amazon has created businesses, side hustles, development and content design opportunities for more than 1.9m small businesses and entrepreneurs around the world who, in turn, have created more than 1.6m jobs in the process. The company has created a special site just for people to buy from small businesses and another one to help aspiring entrepreneurs become partners and merchants. More than half the items sold on their site is sold by a small- or medium-sized company, and countless other consultants, technology companies, logistics firms, warehousing landlords and other small businesses have created their livelihoods on Amazon’s back.