President Donald Trump has apparently changed his mind about eliminating the crony Export-Import Bank, opting to “reform” the swamp rather than drain it.
As bad as this flip-flop is, his excuses for doing so are downright pitiful.
Billions of taxpayer dollars will go to foreign firms to purchase exports from favored multinational companies.
As a candidate in August 2015, Trump categorized the bank as “feather bedding,” adding, “I don’t like it. I think it’s a lot of excess baggage. I think it’s unnecessary. And when you think about free enterprise, it’s really not free enterprise.”
He was right, of course, but that was then.
On Friday, the president announced his intention to nominate former New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett as bank president and former Rep. Spencer T. Bachus III to the Ex-Im board.
If the two are confirmed, the bank will return to full operation after 21 months without a board quorum—which prohibited deals exceeding $10 million.
And that means billions of taxpayer dollars to foreign firms and foreign governments with which to purchase exports from favored multinational companies such as Boeing, General Electric, and Caterpillar.
The best course of action would be to eliminate the bank altogether. There is no shortage of private export financing, and the subsidies distort credit and labor markets.
Perhaps worst of all, unsubsidized American companies are placed at a competitive disadvantage compared to the foreign firms collecting Ex-Im subsidies. (Delta, for example, loses out when Air India gets a sweetheart deal from Boeing by way of Ex-Im.)
A Meritless Flip-Flop
The White House is making much of the fact that Garrett has been a critic of Ex-Im, twice voting against renewal of the bank charter. That supposedly portends reform, although Congress has previously tried to do so without appreciable effect.
No amount of bureaucratic tinkering can shield taxpayers from bailouts in the event that bank reserves run dry—as occurred in the 1980s—nor protect American businesses from the disadvantages of the U.S. government subsidizing their foreign competitors.
In an April 12 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump acknowledged that he had been “very much opposed” to the bank but changed his mind because “lots of small companies will really be helped.
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