It’s customary at this time of year to fill the slow news days of the season with a year-in-review piece. But my guess is you still remember 2025 (alas). So I thought I’d focus on the key questions that will likely make or break our region’s economy in 2026.

1) Is this the year Target turns it around?

Absent its somewhat artificial pandemic boost (that the company admittedly made the most of), one could press the case that Target hasn’t really had a good run of organic sales growth since CEO Bob Ulrich’s days. The Gregg Steinhafel era is a write-off and Brian Cornell’s soon-to-conclude tenure looks increasingly shaky. The hope is incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke has the vision to harness what once made Target a shining star among retail also-rans as well as a driver of our local economy and our business community’s esteem. Word out of 1000 Nicollet Mall is the place is currently crawling with consultants, which may or may not be a good sign.

2) Can Kaohly Her reopen St. Paul to business?

Melvin Carter seemed like a nice man who genuinely cared about the less fortunate. But his disinterest in much else, including basic principles of economics and the role of a business community in keeping a city healthy, has started to look like malpractice. Yes, St. Paul had bad luck (see: Madison Equities, endless state government work-from-home), and structural factors have placed its downtown in a secular decline. But St. Paul remains an awful place to start a business. A city retail stalwart recently told me that the entrepreneurs who rented vacant space next door waited seven weeks for an interior demolition permit and longer for a construction permit. St. Paul’s leadership hated big business, and its bureaucrats seemingly have contempt for small business. Hopefully the new mayor is prepared to make radical change.

3) Will anyone at the Capitol care about business?

The problem business faces in the halls of government is that it no longer speaks with a relevant voice to either major party. The modern DFL is skeptical of capitalism, by and large, increasingly seduced by issues of racial justice and collectivist economic ideology; while the GOP tilts at windmills like MAGA and tariffs and fringe fantasies like Ivermectin. No American political party cares much about business right now, especially on a state and national level. There’s still the odd legislator or suburban mayor, but by and large business has lost its voice. That’s on us for often favoring ideas that had negative social impacts, but it’s also all about the allure of fringe ideology and belief systems that demonize ambition and innovation.

4) Will the state’s family-leave system work?

Minnesota has created a new state bureaucracy and taxation system to provide paid family leave for workers. It’s a good idea in theory or at least a good societal benefit. But it’s costing business a lot of money, and the state doesn’t have much of a track record with setting up benefits programs with fiscal integrity. DFL legislative leaders have said their current concern is people being denied due benefits. They had many of the same concerns of the aid programs currently drowning in organized fraud. Hopefully the bureaucracy the Walz administration has set up to manage our Paid Family & Medical Leave Act has better guardrails and administrators who have as many smarts as empathy.

5) Is this the year we break the competitiveness cycle?

The days of Gov. Wendy Anderson holding a fish on the cover of Time are long past. “The Minnesota Miracle” is an era only the elderly remember. Now the state faces existential competitiveness issues. Our public education system lags. We lose more young people than we earn. We’re an expensive state to do business in. The last five years have turned our national reputation sour as a good place to live and invest. It doesn’t look like the coasts have yet run out of water, so Minnesota still needs an ace in the hole to outweigh our weather. My guess is this isn’t the year we start outperforming competitor states on questions of competitiveness, but we’ve gotta start soon.

6) How does the U Hospital saga end?

One area where the state and metro region still hit above our weight is health care. Yes, there are shortages of specialists, and long waits for some, but by and large Minnesota delivers NY/Boston/LA standards of care in flyover land. The University is a lynchpin, and more turmoil in its medical college and hospital is an ominous omen. I don’t really know who’s wearing the black hat in the Fairview/U tug of war, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Optum may be a very successful Minnesota company, but nobody is moving here because we’ve figured out how to squeeze the most nickels and dimes out of pharmacies and hospitals.