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Uganda lost its only international airport, the Entebbe International Airport, to China for failing to repay a loan,.. The government has failed to reverse a loan agreement with China which had repayment conditions for attaching its only airport. In 2015, China’s Export-Import (EXIM) Bank lent Uganda $207 million at two per cent upon disbursement. The loan, meant for the expansion of Entebbe airport, came with a maturity period of 20 years including a seven-year grace period, News X reported. However, as per international media reports, the Ugandan government waived off the clause for international immunity for securing the loan, following...

We just haven’t gotten assurances if they had to cast the votes how they would vote.”–Ted Pitts, president of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce The business lobby has turned up the heat on U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina to reject President Donald J. Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Export-Import Bank. The National Association of Manufacturers said on Aug. 22 that it had launched radio and online ads in South Carolina calling on the senators to oppose the White House pick, former New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett. A radio script released by NAM says...

The president has nominated attorney J. Mark McWatters for the bank board. However, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has said he's "in no hurry" to hold a hearing or a vote on the nomination. Other pending confirmations take precedence, he said.The last of the 2015 lobbying reports are in, and the top corporate spender turns out to have been the Boeing Company, at $21.9 million. Not coincidentally, the aerospace giant also outranks thousands of other firms in profiting from the subsidies doled out by the Export-Import Bank. Last year, Boeing benefitted...

FULL TITLE: GE may move up to 500 US jobs overseas since Congress failed to renew Ex-Im Bank funding NEW YORK – General Electric Co. may move up to 500 American jobs overseas because Congress did not renew a government program that allows foreign companies to borrow money to buy U.S. products. Authorization for the U.S. Export Import Bank was not approved by Congress, causing it to stop lending on July 1. Foreign companies use the agency to buy expensive U.S. products when bank loans are not possible. As a result, GE says 100 jobs from a Houston plant that...

General Electric is apparently not going to move to Texas because Congressman Jeb Hensarling doesn’t support the Export-Import Bank. Bloomberg cited the ever nebulous “people familiar with the matter” in their report on Friday. GE told Dallas business leaders in recent days it would look elsewhere for alternatives to its Connecticut home, said the people, who asked not to be identified because details aren’t public. They said GE cited some Texas lawmakers’ opposition to the U.S. Export-Import Bank, an important source of financing for some overseas sales. You can probably include Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (allegedly), plus Congressmen...

When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy headlined a fundraiser in early June the room was packed with defense industry lobbyists, but reps from one megacontractor were missing — Boeing. Not only was Boeing absent at that fundraiser, the contractor has cut off all political contributions to the No. 2 House Republican over his support for killing the Export-Import Bank, which facilitates billions of dollars in low-interest loans to U.S. exporters like Boeing. General Electric, also a major supporter of renewing Ex-Im and a benefactor of the agency, has followed suit and has not contributed to the California Republican this year....

The House will not vote on a multi-year Senate highway bill that revives the now-expired Export-Import Bank, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday. “We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy declared to a roomful of reporters in his office. Instead, McCarthy urged the Senate to take up a short-term House-passed bill which extends federal highway funding for five months, without renewing the Ex-Im Bank charter. He called the House bill the “best option” for Congress before money for highways, bridges and mass transit runs out on Friday. McCarthy’s declaration is a blow not only to the Senate,...

Impassioned speech on Senate floor by Ted Cruz.

McConnell is trying to bring back the crony bank, Ex-Im Bank. It sunset at end of June 2015. Now he plans to tie it to a highway bill. At Wednesday’s press conference, Cruz will be joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

Few in the odd coalition of Left and Right pushing for reauthorization of the 81-year-old Export-Import Bank have been louder than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “It’s wrong that candidates for president, who really should know better, are jumping on this bandwagon,” she said at a May 22 campaign stop in New Hampshire. “It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing. . . . The idea that we would remove this relatively small but vital source of funding for our businesses to compete is absolutely backwards.” Clinton’s defense of Ex-Im may be motivated by more than mere concern for American businesses. Critics have argued...

Would you be shocked to find out that the corporatist, corrupt Export-Import Bank has ties to the Clintons and their notorious foundation? During a hearing about the soon-to-expire bank before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, Representative Duffy [WI - Chairman of Oversite Committee] exposed just such connections: [VIDEO - 5:20] This is a perfect example of the unhealthy marriage between the private sector and government. This is what political privilege looks like, and it’s corrupting and unfair. I testified yesterday before the Senate Banking Committee on the need to end Ex-Im as well – here’s my testimony.

A top Boeing official criticized Congress on Tuesday for failing to pass a long-term reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. He also argued that an extension of the Bank’s charter until next summer leaves supporters in a worse position than they were in before. “Mostly far-right political consultants, think tanks and congressmen banded together in a fit of ideological road rage to kill the bank,” Boeing senior vice president Timothy Keating said in prepared remarks at an aerospace conference in Everett, Wash. “The temporary extension recently enacted in many respects leaves us worse off than before,” Keating continued. “The extension is...

Sen. Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) office said the centrist senator has no plans to co-sponsor bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. The move comes after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Senate Democrats would organize a vote on reauthorizing Ex-Im, a top priority for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, soon after the July 4 recess. Schumer’s move highlights how renewing the Export-Import Bank is becoming more of a partisan issue. Republicans are divided over renewing Ex-Im, with Tea Party conservatives arguing the bank’s financing of loans and loan guarantees is a form of crony capitalism best left...

Criticism will rain down Wednesday on the Export-Import Bank as members of an influential House panel debate whether it’s time to disband the agency. Fred Hochberg, the chairman of the embattled bank, will square off in testimony against House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who is leading the charge to let the bank’s charter expire in September. Hensarling and other members are likely to press Hochberg about reports that the bank has suspended or removed four officials for taking kickbacks, a controversy that could strengthen the hand of Ex-Im’s foes. Business supporters swarmed Capitol Hill ahead of the...

As part of his bid to become majority leader, McCarthy told his Republican colleagues in a closed-door meeting that he wouldn't overstep Hensarling on Ex-Im -- a major blow to the bank's future. The bank expires if the House doesn't produce a bill to reauthorize it, and Hensarling's committee has jurisdiction on the issue.Business groups fear the shake-up in House leadership will set back their efforts to renew authorization for the Export-Import bank. With Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) -- an Ex-Im critic during the 2012 battle -- jumping into the majority whip post, supporters of the bank say a divided...

Isn’t this just cozy? Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) is working both sides of the Export-Import Bank. Not only does Richardson sit on the bank’s advisory committee, he’s also a board member of one of its loan recipients. The U.S. Export-Import Bank recently steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans to Spanish green energy conglomerate Abengoa, which happens to share an advisory board member with the bank. The Ex-Im Bank approved a $78.6 million direct loan to Spain-based Abengoa in December. It also approved a $73.6 million direct loan to a wind farm in Uruguay, which...

A President Dares Us Once Again. In Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s story, “Alice in Wonderland,” young Alice is wandering through that magical fantasyland when she encounters a talking egg, which confused her by sprinkling clearly-misused words into the conversation. When she called him on it, Humpty Dumpty assumed his most arrogant pose and declared "When I use a word, it means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less." How dare the girl call him on his abuse of language?! If he wanted to use a word to mean something it had never meant before, and...

...in 2012, after eighty years of the Ex-Im Bank successfully and happily obeying its charter, President Obama has directed the Ex-Im Bank to violate it wholesale. Instead of only loaning to good foreign risks, he wants them to loan to American companies (in competition with American banks). Instead of only making loans attached to, and collateralized by, American export shipments of physical goods, he wants them to make start-up loans, short-term finance loans, bridge loans, that have nothing to do with export shipments (though they might help the companies become exporters, in the same way that if you give me...

Acting without any legal authority, President Obama has overridden the federal charter of the Export-Import Bank, and turned it into a competitor for domestic loan business, in utter defiance of the law. Hardly anyone has noticed or seems to care. Speaking at a Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Washington Friday, President Barack Obama announced a bold new plan to help American exporters: he would broaden the services of the Ex-Im Bank to help grow our exports. Now, that sounds good on the face of it. The Ex-Im Bank is chartered as an export-funding source with a very narrow, specific charter....

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wants answers from the US taxpayer supported Export-Import bank about a $2 billion loan to Brazil for offshore drilling. Vitter’s home state is suffering under a moratorium imposed by President Barack Obama. Vitter said Louisianians “are frustrated” and he wants to know “why permitting domestically is nearly stalled…” Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had questions about ExIM—nine years ago when he asked Congress to reject the reauthorization of ExIm for “economic, constitutional and moral reasons.” Vitter sent a letter to Fred Hochberg, Ex-Im president, on March 17. Vitter asked Hochberg to identify all US companies that have...