Perspectives
The Jobs Bank — How the Export-Import Bank Supports Job Creation Across America
By providing financing for exports when private banks won’t, the Export-Import Bank helps small businesses in every state reach overseas customers. That means higher-paying jobs at home.
The Export-Import Bank isn’t your typical bank. The independent, self-sustaining agency functions as a key engine of job creation across America.
By helping U.S. businesses sell their goods overseas — through loans, guarantees and export-credit insurance — the Ex-Im Bank helps ensure American-made products can reach 95 percent of the world’s customers.
These exports mean U.S. jobs — 1.5 million of which were supported by the bank over the past seven years, in all 50 states, according to the Ex-Im Coalition’s analysis of bank data. Small businesses are the biggest winners, benefitting from nine out of 10 transactions. That’s not counting the tens of thousands of small U.S. suppliers who gain through partnerships with larger exporters.
“Ex-Im ensures that my company — and others — can compete on quality. And when it comes to quality, `Made In America’ is what our international clients prefer,” says Michael McSweeney, managing partner and owner of McSweeney Holdings. The small automaker, based in Trussville, Ala., has been making specialty vehicles — Southern Comfort Automotive, Starcraft, Star Limo — for General Motors since 1979. About four in 10 of its jobs are dependent upon exports.
McSweeney is joining more than 650 other small and medium-sized exporters in Washington, D.C. this week to urge Congress to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank before its charter runs out at the end of June. If it doesn’t, he says, “companies like mine will have no other option to continue offering cost effective financial terms, and we’ll have to cut jobs.”
John Dumot, president and CEO of Liberty Electronics, warns that the Franklin, Pa.-based manufacturer could lose a fifth or more of its business. “This could backfire on everyone,” says Dumot, whose company makes wiring harnesses, cable assemblies and other electrical products for the military but also large customers like GE and Westinghouse.
This infographic shows how many jobs the bank has supported across America from 2007-2014 and tells the stories of McSweeney and other small business owners who have benefitted:
Watch Wednesday’s Ex-Im Bank event, Keeping Our Edge: Jobs, Exports and Global Competitiveness, here.
(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)