The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government entity charged with helping boost exports from domestic businesses, met last week to discuss giving hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to a foreign airline so that it can buy Boeing airplanes. The airline-- Biman Bangladesh-- is known for its poor safety record and unreliable service.
While this proposed deal is disconcerting, it points to a broader problem: The Ex-Im Bank’s priorities are backwards. Instead of helping domestic small businesses that actually need assistance when it comes to exporting their goods abroad, the Ex-Im Bank is subsidizing multibillion-dollar corporations like Boeing whose bottom lines are doing just fine.
Dick Cheney’s former Big Oil employer Halliburton has received at least a billion in loans from the Ex-Im Bank over the years. Enron, which imploded after its massive fraud scandal, got more than $650 million in loans. And Lockheed Martin, the aerospace and defense behemoth, is benefiting from over $381 million in loans made in 2012 alone.
According to its most recent earnings report, Boeing’s third quarter revenue was $22 billion. Halliburton’s quarterly revenue was $7.5 billion, and Lockheed Martin had net sales of $11.9 billion. (Enron went bankrupt.)
As Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio argued in an op-ed this past August, we “need to do a better job in ensuring that small businesses have access to the global market.” He pointed out that, “Less than one percent of the nation’s nearly 26 million small businesses export their products and these 240,000 businesses account for only 29 percent of the United States’ export volume.”
The administration can help reverse this trend and boost small business exports by reevaluating some of the Ex-Im Bank’s loans that are directly benefiting large corporations. It should start by re-appropriating some of these funds to the little guy-- Main Street businesses that are the foundation of America’s middle class.
As Mike Lux said when he sent me that, "multibillion-dollar corporations don’t need help from the Export-Import Bank." Now let's go back to that not unrelated Bill Moyers video at the top of the page about the newest "free trade" catastrophe the cross-partisan neo-liberal ruling elites are planning to impose on us next, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This morning's NY Times made a dreadful mistake in backing this monstrosity. Like all these kinds of trade agreements that Clinton, the Bushs and Obama have been shoving down our throats, this one is designed to put the uber-wealthy and their corporation even more firmly in control of… well, everything, ultimately. The end of democracy? You betcha!
As Moyers explained in his introduction, "If you don't know about the TPP… it's because the powerful people behind it, including President Obama, don't want you to know. The negotiations are shrouded in secrecy. And once they're completed, Obama wants to rush the agreement through Congress; fast-tracking, they call it, elected representatives only given the choice of voting it up or down. Last year, over 130 Members of Congress asked the White House for more transparency for what's being negotiated. And were essentially told to go fly a kite."
Those are our representatives and that's what the plutocracy is telling us through the politicians they've bought and paid for. Moyers continued: "You can be sure of this, however: a select group of corporate partners, companies like General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, are not likely to be in the dark. Players like these stand to be the real beneficiaries of the agreement. Because, like other so-called "free trade" agreements, TPP actually will reward those at the top, even as it creates rules that will override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety and investment. Corporate lobbyists are already lining up in Washington to ram the agreement through once the White House hurries it out of the delivery room." Watch the whole 33 minute video.
And, of course, the kinds of candidates Blue America gets behind do not support these kinds of devastating trade agreements. Pat Murphy, running a populist and progressive campaign for the open Iowa-1 seat isn't going to be voting for these kinds of garbage treaties, regardless of which party holds the White House. "Just as NAFTA and CAFTA hurt American workers and unions," he told us this morning, "the Trans-Pacific Partnership will do the same. We need fair trade that is good for workers-- not free trade. I also have huge concerns with the lack of transparency as this agreement is being pushed forward. In Congress, I will fight for policies that strengthen the middle class and help working families." If you'd like to help Pat-- and our other FAIR TRADE candidates get to Congress, you can do that here.
