The Export-Import Bank (ExIm), a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports primarily through loan guarantees, dedicated a majority of its guarantee dollars again last year to subsidies for Boeing sales, according to the agency’s Annual Report.

Weighted by dollar value, Boeing directly benefited from 52.2% of Ex-Im’s long-term loan guarantees-the only transactions Ex-Im itemizes in its report this year. Over the last nine years, Boeing’s share of Ex-Im loans and long-term guarantees is 52%.

With the agency’s authorization expiring this year, Ex-Im officials have been touting their support for small businesses-an issue that lawmakers raised last time Ex-Im came before Congress for reauthorization.

.fa_inline_results, .fa_inline_results.left {
margin-right: 20px;
margin-top: 0;
width: 220px;
clear: left;
}
.fa_inline_results.right {
margin-left: 20px;
margin-right: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results h4 {
margin: 0;
font-size: 8pt;
line-height: 12px;
padding-bottom: 4px;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #c3d2dc;
}
.fa_inline_results ul {
list-style-type: disc;
list-style-position: inside;
color: #3769DD;
margin: 0 0 15px;
padding: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li.title {
color: #333;
list-style-type: none;
font-weight: bold;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li.articles {
color: #333;
list-style-type: none;
}

.fa_inline_results, .fa_inline_results.left {
margin-right: 20px;
margin-top: 0;
width: 220px;
clear: left;
}
.fa_inline_results.right {
margin-left: 20px;
margin-right: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results h4 {
margin: 0;
font-size: 8pt;
line-height: 12px;
padding-bottom: 4px;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #c3d2dc;
}
.fa_inline_results ul {
list-style-type: disc;
list-style-position: inside;
color: #3769DD;
margin: 0 0 15px;
padding: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li.title {
color: #333;
list-style-type: none;
font-weight: bold;
}
.fa_inline_results ul li.articles {
color: #333;
list-style-type: none;
}

Also, the Bush Administration’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has been applying legal and diplomatic pressure on European governments to cease their subsidies of Airbus, Boeing’s only competitor in the business of making large passenger jets.

Ex-Im and Boeing officials defend the agency’s heavy support for one company. “Airplanes are expensive items,” Amanda Landers, Boeing spokeswoman, told HUMAN EVENTS. ( Boeing planes sell for at least $45 million and as much as $250 million.) Landers also pointed out that Boeing is America’s top exporter.

Advertisement

Ex-Im spokesman Phil Cogan attributed Boeing’s large share of Ex-Im financing to the fact that Boeing “sells big-ticket items,” and that “Ex-Im is a demand-driven institution.” Cogan pointed out that Boeing has 6,600 U.S suppliers, of which Ex-Im says 2,900 are small businesses. Indeed, Ex-Im has produced a poster with a headline, “When Boeing exports … small businesses all over America work.” The poster features a map of the U.S. plotting Boeing’s suppliers in almost all 50 states.

Currently, the U.S. is actively pursuing a trade case against European Union states over their subsidies for Boeing. In May 2005, then-USTR Rob Portman declared it was the administration’s goal to “negotiate to end subsidies for large civil aircraft.” Boeing’s Landers points to Europe’s subsidies as a reason that Boeing needs Ex-Im. “Airbus has three Export Credit Agencies. We only have Ex-Im. If you take away the [Ex-Im] Bank, we’d be at a severe disadvantage-and that would probably cost jobs.”

Ex-Im officials point out that in FY 2005, 2,617 of Ex-Im’s 3,128 transactions “directly benefited small businesses.” Typically, these small business subsidies were comparatively small-dollar transactions and are not itemized. Ex-Im’s annual report shows that, by dollar amount, small businesses benefit from about 19.1% of all Ex-Im transactions.

In its 2002 reauthorization, Congress required Ex-Im to set aside 20% of its financing, dollar-wise, for small business. In none of the years since then has Ex-Im reached that mark.

Further, in every year since 2002, Boeing has received more than 50% of Ex-Im’s loan and long-term guarantee dollars. In FY 2003, for example, $4.4 billion of ExIm’s $6.5 billion (68.2%) in loans and long-term guarantees subsidized Boeing sales. This last year Ex-Im guaranteed $4.2 billion to subsidize Boeing aircraft, and only $3.9 billion for all other U.S. exporters combined. (Ex-Im issued no direct loans in FY 2005.)