The debate over the future of the Export-Import Bank can be difficult to follow, in part because proponents of the Bank are often in conflict with one another. Here are the latest examples:
Does Export-Import Bank provide cheap loans?
Tony Fratto, Hamilton Place Strategies: All of you that have been writing that Ex-Im makes cheap loans -- they actually make expensive loans. (AEI Debate, July 24, 2014)
Former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH): By allowing American companies, mostly very large ones, to finance the products they want to sell to a foreign company or government at a reduced rate, the Ex-Im Bank in fact represents an American commercial threat to foreign companies. (The Hill, July 28, 2014)
Does the Export-Import Bank create job?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), via spokesman: Senator Warren believes that the Export-Import Bank helps create American jobs and spur economic growth, but recognizes that there is room for improvement in the bank's operations." (Bloomberg, July 18, 2014)
Doug Holtz-Eakin's American Action Forum: Ex-Im's financing may help create jobs in specific industries. However, for the economy as a whole export financing merely redistributes jobs across the economy rather than create more overall jobs. In addition, Ex-Im's economic impact analysis process may be insufficient to guard against risks such as harm to U.S. industries that compete with subsidized foreign purchasers of U.S. exports. (American Action Forum, May 2011)