EXIM plans aggressive marketing push and steady market growth
(Reuters, Washington, 7 July 2022) The U.S. Export-Import Bank plans "aggressive" measures to restore its standing in the business community and to bump up credit volumes running at roughly a quarter of their levels from 2014 before it was hobbled first by Congress and then a global pandemic. In that span, EXIM faded in the minds of customers and foreign governments - and many simply never got to know it. Export-Import Bank President Reta Jo Lewis told Reuters. Republicans in Congress in July 2015 sought to permanently shutter EXIM, charging it was providing "corporate welfare" through cheap export financing for Boeing, General Electric, Caterpillar and other corporate giants. Its charter was restored after 4 months, but Republicans blocked EXIM board nominees for 4 more years, limiting it to loans of $10 million or less and shutting it out of the market for aircraft and major infrastructure projects. During the void, GE was among U.S. firms that turned elsewhere, agreeing in 2015 to move manufacturing of oilfield gas generator engines to Canada from Wisconsin, in a deal to access Canadian export financing. Meanwhile, China has continued to dwarf EXIM's efforts, providing $11 billion in official medium and long-term export credit in 2021, compared with $2.2 billion for the United States, according to EXIM's annual competitiveness report.