This is nothing new, and as a short rider, I feel your pain.

The reason for both of these design choices is to reduce the chance of toe overlap, which people (and possibly the CPSC) have decided is a big problem. The effect of a slacker HTA is fairly obvious. The effect of the steeper STA is less obvious, but what it does is push the headtube further away from the rider, which of course pushes the front wheel further away from the bottom bracket. This is a particularly annoying element of small frame design, because it means going down a size on a particular frame could result in EXACTLY the same amount of reach to the handlebars as on the bigger frame DESPITE a shorter toptube. Obviously, this negates a lot of the reason to size down in the first place. And a slack HTA is problematic for obvious reasons. A little bit of slackness shouldn't be a big deal, as the short wheelbase of a smaller bike compensates somewhat, but it doesn't take too much before you really compromise responsiveness.

It's frustrating for me, because toe overlap is really a non-issue on a road bike. But most manufacturers feel compelled to reduce or eliminate it, and so compromise the handling in much more serious ways. The only option you have is to pay pretty close attention to the geometry of bikes that interest you. Some manufacturers just don't care and do everything in their power to eliminate toe overlap. They tend to end up with compromised bikes. Other manufacturers try to find a middle ground. One common solution in smaller sizes is to slacken the head tube angle a bit, but add a fork with more offset. This is a pretty smart way to do things, as the greater fork offset contributes to reducing toe overlap but also brings the trail back down. It's worth pointing out that a steeper HTA and greater fork offset both decrease trail, but they do not affect handling in the same way. So, even with the same trail, a slacker HTA and more raked fork will handle differently. Still, I like this combo. My bike has a 72 HTA and a 49mm offset fork. It actually has slightly less trail than my last bike, with a 73 HTA and 45mm fork, but I prefer the way it handles. More rake makes a bike really want to dive into a turn, which feels good to me.

The final approach is to change absolutely nothing, but maintain the same HTA and fork offset across the line. Surly uses this approach for their Cross-Check and Long Haul Trucker. Cervelo mostly does this, but gives in and slackens the HTA in the smallest size. I may have alluded to this already, but it's worth pointing out that there's a case to be made that this is the wrong approach - that maintaining the same angles across all sizes will actually result in the bicycle handling differently at opposite ends of the size range. The argument is that bigger bikes should get steeper angles, and smaller bikes should get slacker angles. I'm pretty agnostic on this, because I'm not a bike designer and don't know. I do know that many small bikes definitely go too far and simply don't want to turn. So I would stay away from really slack HTA bikes in my size. But I would give a fair shot to small differences.