Excerpt from The Nelson Report
Printable Version
A useful discussion of the reasons for Ex-Im at
the Center for
National Policy today. President Scott
Bates, moderating questions for the
guest speaker, former Commerce Secretary Carlos
Gutierrez, argued "We focus on national security policy
here at the Center, and want to emphasize that
the Export Administration Bank is an important
component of US national
security!"
As a Republican,
Gutierrez of course wanted to be careful in his
criticisms/comments on continued House
Republican opposition to fully funding ExIm,
even though the bank has already run out of
loan money, and it's formal budget shuts down
at the end of May, due to Budget chair Ryan's
current position.
But he had no
problem decrying T-Party populist claims that
ExIm is simply a "crutch" for Boeing and a few
other, big-ticket US exporters. Boeing,
Caterpillar, GE and a handful of other major
manufacturers make the very expensive items
which require financing, and which generate
both export profits and domestic
jobs.
We thought the most
effective part of his arguments, in terms of
appealing to non-T Party Republicans, at least,
and presumably also Labor Democrats, is that
both China and now Russia are ginning-up their
own versions of Ex-Im, so now would be
absolutely the worst time for the US to let
ExIm collapse, or be subjected to significant
delay in full funding.
Gutierrez
also pointed out China's emphasis on the ASEAN
+ 3, and that some 100 FTA's are currently in
negotiation, while the US presently is only
engaged in TPP...and that China is backing-up
its SOE's entry into the global market with
massive infrastructure projects throughout the
world, but especially targeting S.E.
Asia.
US business sources
currently leading the fight for ExIm tell us
that negotiations are on-going with Congress,
and that there's rising hope some kind of
useful deal may be in the works...stay
tuned.
