But pre-Internet liberals might want to get out their back issues of the Nation and Mother Jones at this point to jog their memory, for they will see article after article condemning the 80-year-old institution as a slush fund that allows the government to fund a series of nasty activities. Heres one from 1981 (The Ex-Im helps sell nuclear reactors to dictatorships like the Philippines). Heres another from 1992, about the Reagan administration using Ex-Im to funnel loans to Saddam Husseins Iraq during their war with Iran. Even more recently, in 2011, Mother Jones reported on how Ex-Im loan guarantees helped build one of the largest coal plants in the world, in South Africa. (Ex-Im subsequently announced it would stop facilitating coal plant production but only in December of last year.)
Ex-Im wasnt just a minor annoyance, but a lefty cause célébre. Heres Sen. Bernie Sanders, back when he served in the House, eviscerating Ex-Im on the floor in 2002, when it came up for reauthorization then. Sanders asked why American taxpayers would provide huge subsidies and loans to the largest multinational corporations in the world, who pay their CEOs huge salaries
and companies take this money from the taxpayers and say, thank you very much, and oh by the way, we are laying you off because we are going to China and hiring somebody at 20 cents an hour.
Sanders crafted bipartisan legislation to reform Ex-Im to better protect manufacturing workers, but the bills markup got canceled at the last minute. My suspicion is that the moneyed interests who like the Export-Import Bank as it is right now sent down the word from the top that that markup never take place, he told his House colleagues.
Back then, liberals highlighted how Enron, the failed energy giant, benefited from $675 million in Ex-Im loans. In 2002, Sanders also pointed out that Ex-Im gave an $18 million loan to a Chinese steel mill, which was later on accused of dumping steel into U.S. markets and hurting U.S. workers. And it was common just a decade or so ago for lefties to call Ex-Im the Bank of Boeing, because close to 60 percent of all Ex-Im loans facilitated their aircraft sales. Sanders in particular pointed out that Ex-Im aid for a Boeing sale to the Chinese military ended up displacing workers, as some manufacturing for the aircraft moved from Wichita to China. The Export-Import Bank is helping General Electric ship jobs to Mexico
helping AT&T ship jobs to China. And on and on it goes, Sanders concluded.
And Sanders certainly did not believe that financing for multinational trade deals would dry up without Ex-Im. He questioned the head of the bank in 2004, asking, General Electric, which itself is one of the largest financial institutions in America, cannot get loans anyplace else but from the taxpayers and the workers of America? Are you going to tell me with a straight face that GE is a struggling small business, a minority business in the barrio of New York, and they just cannot find financing?
I wanted to give all that back story to inform todays debate. While libertarian groups like the Cato Institute have been consistent on opposing Ex-Im for picking corporate winners and losers, most of the rest of D.C. has shifted. Establishment conservatives like the incoming majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, once supported Ex-Im. Now he opposes it. While some Republicans still support the bank 41 House GOP members endorsed it Monday a large majority of the caucus has turned away, following the lead of Financial Services Committee chair Jeb Hensarling. Republicans barely reauthorized Ex-Im two years ago, amid Tea Party resistance to crony capitalism. Then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the driving force behind reauthorization then; with him on the way out, the bank is imperiled. Boeing stock crashed after Cantors primary loss.
