David Stockman reports:
The surface facts make abundantly clear that the case for the Ex-Im Bank is truly lame. In the most recent year (2013), its credit guarantees and other programs accounted for $37 billion of exports or less than 2% of the $2.2 trillion of exports generated by the US economy. Moreover, by the bank’s own reckoning only about $12 billion of these Ex-Im deals deployed taxpayer subsidies in order to “meet competition from a foreign, officially sponsored export credit agency”.
So suppose those latter export deals which purportedly faced unfair competition from foreign governments would not have happened absent Ex-Im financing. We are talking about 0.6% of exports and 0.1% of GDP. That is, we are talking about economic “noise” that is so faint that even Janet Yellen could not detect it!
Guess who's helping the rent-seeking operation? The Wall Street Journal explains:
With the 80-year-old agency’s charter expiring Sept. 30, the battle over its future has intensified. Its backers are redoubling their efforts, which include showing members of Congress how the agency benefits their districts.
“There’s a full inside-the-Beltway, outside-the-Beltway push,” said Christopher Wenk, senior director of international policy at the U.S. Chamber. “We’re burning up shoe leather.”
Lawmakers at a recent House hearing on the future of the Export-Import Bank were given an extra piece of reading material: a personalized index card laying out exactly which companies in their districts benefit from the financing agency and how many people they employ.
The cards, which supporters of the bank plan to give to every member of Congress in coming weeks, are part of a lobbying push by corporations such as Boeing Co.
The business groups have brought in big names such as former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Democrat, and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, to promote the bank’s worth. Hamilton Place Strategies, hired to lobby on the issue for the manufacturers, has created a “war room” to provide rapid response to counter critics via email and social media.
If Boeing can't make it without ripping off taxpayers: then they don't deserve to exist.
