The White House announced Wednesday that President Trump nominated Kimberly Reed to be the new president for the Export-Import Bank, suggesting that he is seeking to revive the Deep State’s infamous bank known for subsidizing communist and other authoritarian regimes’ acquisition of sensitive U.S. goods.
Fortunately, the bank has been in hiatus for the past three years, since 2015. Unless there is a quorum of at least three members, the ExIm Bank cannot approve transactions that provide or ensure credits for foreign trade above a value of $10 million.
The only member currently serving on the ExIm Bank’s board is Jeffrey Gerrish, the deputy U.S. Trade Representative, whom Trump named as the bank’s acting president this past April.
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Last year, Reed was approved by the Senate Banking Committee to serve as the bank’s first vice president and board member, however she was never brought up for a full Senate confirmation vote. The Senate has yet to confirm two other ExIm board nominees approved by the Senate Banking Committee. The White House retracted its nomination of Reed for ExIm vice-president in favor of nominating her for president of the bank.
The ExIm Bank is a creature of FDR’s New Deal-era swamp, intended to subsidize U.S. exports during the Great Depression and World War II. Unfortunately, the ExIm Bank remained after World War II and has since become synonymous with crony capitalism and corporate welfare.
In the years prior to 2015, the Exim Bank subsidized less than two percent of all U.S. exports. However, more than 61 percent of its financing went to 10 U.S. corporations, including Boeing, Caterpillar, General Electric, Applied Materials Inc, and the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation.
Its reputation is less than admirable. Distained by many in Washington, but seemingly impervious to defeat by its critics, the Deep State has remained active for decades as one of the essential vehicles for the Insiders behind the Deep State to undermine the American free market and build up communist dictatorships abroad through taxpayer-funded subsidies and credits.
The ExIm Bank receives its funds from the U.S. Treasury from money created out of thin air, which eventually results in increased taxes and inflation. After the ExIm Bank receives its funds, it loans them at lower-than-market-value rates with long-term deferred due dates to countries historically such as Communist China, the Soviet Union/Russia, and Pakistan.
Those countries in turn use those funds to purchase goods from specific U.S. companies, such as Boeing, General Electric, and also Lockheed Martin. In fact, the ExIm Bank is also known as “Boeing’s Bank” or the “Bank of Boeing,” because Boeing has received upwards of 40 percent of the funds that ExIm discharges for foreign countries to purchase its aircrafts.
In the event that the recipient country fails to pay back on its loan, the U.S. taxpayer foots the bill entirely. As former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) put it in a newsletter to his constituents in 1980, “The Soviets get the goods. The big banks and companies get the profits. And the taxpayer gets the bill.”
Remarking about the ExIm Bank, current Congressman David Brat (R-Va.) has stated, “As an economist, I support free trade and equal protection under the law, but I oppose special privileges and Washington picking winners and losers in the economy. Just as then-Senator Barack Obama said in 2008, the Export-Import Bank is little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”
The only real winners with the ExIm Bank are those handful of corporations such as Boeing that are guaranteed to make a profit from selling their aircrafts to foreign countries such as Russia and China. And of course the other winners are also the foreign governments, which are virtually guaranteed their desired loans with little financial risk to themselves.
While it certainly is profitable for American companies to sell their goods overseas, they should do so without government subsidies from taxpayers. In fact, countries such as Communist China and Russia are notorious for reverse-engineering aircrafts or satellites to augment their own military capabilies and also to learn how to manufacture knockoffs which they can in turn sell for less than the cost of a Boeing aircraft — ultimately undercutting American manufacturing. But it can afford to turn a blind eye considering the expected short-term revenue from the ExIm subsidies.
The ExIm Bank makes it easier for authoritarian governments such as those of the Communist Party of China and Vladimir Putin in Russia to purchase goods. The ExIm does more good for America’s rivals and potential enemies overseas than the American taxpayers who fund it.
The ExIm Bank does anything but put “America First” or “Make America Great Again,” which makes it rather surprising that President Trump would nominate a new president and board members in order to give the ExIm the necessary quorum to undermine the American taxpayer and free-market.
Photo: AP Images
