Industry groups press for Ex-Im Bank’s full operation

Exporters that rely on U.S. Export-Import Bank financing to secure large international deals are frustrated that the bank’s board currently cannot approve transactions of more than $10 million without a quorum.    Exporters that rely on U.S. Export-Import Bank financing to secure large international deals are frustrated that the bank’s board currently cannot approve transactions of more than $10 million without a quorum.
   The bank requires three of its five board members to approve large financing packages. However, the board currently has only two seats filled and congressional approval for the third bank board director’s appointment has stalled on Capitol Hill.
   “As a result, manufacturers and other exporters throughout the United States are at a significant disadvantage to global competitors who are aggressively supported by their own governments’ export credit agencies,” a group of 15 large trade association warned in a letter to both House and Senate leadership this week.
   Some of the trade groups to sign the letter include the Aerospace Industries Association, American Chemistry Council, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, National Association of Manufacturers, National Foreign Trade Council, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
   The groups said they are “encouraged” to see language in both the House and Senate foreign operations appropriations bills that would “temporarily modify the bank’s quorum requirement so that it may again review transactions over $10 million dollars.”
   “We strongly urge you to include this modification, which was also on the White House’s anomaly list, to the bank’s board in the continuing resolution,” they added.
   However, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, is leading the charge to block this attempt to modify Ex-Im Bank’s quorum requirement.
   Jordan told The Daily Signal Thursday that what supporters of the bank on Capitol Hill are attempting to do is “just wrong,” adding “the Ex-Im Bank and the cronyism associated with it is wrong, and now they’re changing the rules midstream? That is wrong, too.”
   The beleaguered bank was closed last summer while a group of Republican lawmakers opposed the reauthorization of its charter. Ex-Im Bank supporters in Congress managed reauthorize its charter on Dec. 3 as part of a long-term transportation bill. The bill approved long-term reauthorization from Congress that will remain in effect through Sept. 30, 2019.