EX-IM BANK/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “During the presidential campaign, Trump said he didn’t think the bank [Export-Import Bank] was needed.
‘It’s sort of a featherbedding for politicians and others, and a few companies,’ he told the conservative National Review in 2015. ‘And when you think about free enterprise, it’s really not free enterprise. I’d be against it.’
…White House budget director Mick Mulvaney voted against the bank’s 2015 authorization when he served as a Republican House member from South Carolina…
The bank is funded by interest and fees on its aid, and it sent $284 million in profit to the Treasury last year. Although the bank receives no appropriations, lawmakers each year set the amount it can spend to pay salaries and other overhead.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), a bank proponent, said Trump promised her after a Feb. 9 White House meeting that he would nominate a third board member. ‘The great news is that President Trump agrees, and he informed me that we can in fact say he supports the Ex-Im Bank and that he would be nominating someone soon to serve on the Export-Import Bank.’
Two key Cabinet members, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have publicly indicated support for the bank recently, although with changes to focus its aid on small businesses…
Conservatives have derided the agency as ‘Boeing’s Bank.’ But company executives say the export assistance flows down to 13,600 U.S. companies that supply parts for Boeing aircraft. In California alone, the company funneled about $6.8 billion to more than 2,800 suppliers and vendors in 2015.”
-Jim Puzzanghera, “Businesses say they need the Export-Import Bank to sell goods abroad. Will Trump fix it?,” The Los Angeles Times online, March 13, 2017