Export-Import Bank critic might head agency
Trump nomination casts doubt about future of controversial bank
The White House announced Friday that it will nominate an outspoken critic of the Export-Import Bank to head the agency, following a week in which President Trump appeared to reverse his position on the controversial bank.
Former Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., who voted twice against reauthorizing the bank while in Congress, will be nominated as president of the bank. Separately, former Rep. Spencer Bachus III, R-Ala., is slated to be nominated to join the bank’s board. Both nominees require Congressional confirmation.
Garrett, a deeply conservative Congressman who helped found the House Freedom group, has in the past heavily criticized the agency he may now be tasked with leading, calling it a “fund for corporate welfare” and “a bank that embodies the corruption of the free enterprise system” in a speech on the floor of the House in 2015.
The bank, which offers financial support to U.S. exporters, is despised by conservative Republicans, who have forced it to remain effectively dormant for nearly two years. Yet the appointments themselves may allow the bank to resume lending in earnest, after being legally barred from acting by a lack of leadership.
Trump opposed the bank during the campaign, but indicated he planned to reopen the bank for business in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday — one of several recent decisions by the president that suggest a shift in his views on economic policy.
In the Wall Street Journal interview, Trump said that he had been “much opposed” to the Ex-Im Bank, until he realized that the bank helps small companies and that other countries offer similar assistance. “So instinctively you would say it’s a ridiculous thing but actually it’s a very good thing and it actually makes money,” Trump said.
Trump — who won the Republican nomination and the presidency on an agenda that eschewed conservative economic thinking — has adopted more orthodox GOP positions since taking office in January. Also Friday, his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, declined to declare that China is manipulating its currency in an official report, pleasing economists and experts on trade but violating a promise that the president repeated frequently on the stump.
Conservative lawmakers have lambasted the Export-Import Bank for years. The bank helps U.S. firms sell their products abroad by offering cheap, federally guaranteed loans and other forms of financial support. Opponents point out that the bulk of the assistance provided by the bank goes to major multinational firms, such as Boeing.
A conservative faction in Congress succeeded in shutting down the bank in 2015. The bank reopened later that year, but conservative lawmakers prevented then-President Obama from filling two vacancies on the board which lacked a quorum required for action.