US Ex-im: Conservatives vs Big Business

(Newsweek, Washington, 8 June 2015) The nearly 80-year-old federally run Ex-Im bank claims to cover its own costs—even generating a surplus—thanks to the interest it collects on loans. It claimed to support $27.4 billion in U.S. exports last year, less than 2 percent of all American exports. And its highly technical line of work offering export-related loan guarantees and export credit insurance to exporters and banks is hardly the sort of subject that’s going to galvanize the American public... And yet, thanks to the growing clout of a group of Tea Party–inspired members of Congress and their allies around the country, Ex-Im has become the latest litmus test of fiscal conservatism. Those trying to kill the bank, whose charter expires at the end of June 2015, believe its demise can be a springboard in their bigger fight to remake Washington.