US Ex-Im Bank gets seven-year extension

(Space News, Washington, 21 December 2019) The year-end spending package President Trump signed into law late December 20 includes a 7 year re-authorization for EXIM, a lending agency that has been largely sidelined as a source of cheap financing for U.S. satellite deals since Congress let Ex-Im’s charter lapse in 2015. The $1.37 trillion omnibus bill, which funds the U.S. government through Sept. 30, 2020, provides Ex-Im its longest authorization period ever, though still shorter than what some lawmakers had sought. The enacted legislation also enables the bank to keep lending in the absence of a full board of directors by allowing other government officials to temporarily fill vacancies in order to maintain a quorum. New rules for Ex-Im Bank state that if the bank lacks a quorum for 120 consecutive days during a president’s term, a temporary board will form consisting of the treasury and commerce secretaries, the U.S. trade representative and the bank’s confirmed board members. That temporary board would remain until at least three board members are confirmed or until the U.S. president’s term expires... Proponents of Ex-Im Bank have in recent years sought to use the export-credit agency as a soft power tool to counter Chinese export credit and, by extension, Chinese influence globally. The legislation directs the bank “to focus on the important economic and national security challenges posed by China,” Kimberly Reed, Ex-Im’s president and chairman, said in a statement on Dec. 20. The board of directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), included Nicaragua in its Country Limitation Schedule (CLS) Program, which, as of December 23, will stop working with Nicaragua. With this decision, Nicaragua joins the “undesirables club of the EXIM,” which also includes Afghanistan, Bolivia, North Korea, Cuba, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Nauru, Central African Republic, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Venezuela and Yemen.