Candidate Trump said he would abolish the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that subsidizes foreign buyers of U.S. goods. Trump’s earliest budget framework listed Ex-Im among independent agencies to abolish.
But the White House’s latest budget framework leaves Ex-Im off the hit list. This follows many reports from congressional fans of Ex-Im that Trump had been persuaded to love the agency, which primarily subsidizes Boeing sales. (Though Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin suggested the agency could be retooled to serve small businesses.)
Ex-Im’s sister agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation is still on the kill list in Trump’s budget. OPIC subsidizes U.S. companies that want to set up business overseas, such as a Ritz Carlton in Turkey or a Wendy’s in the Republic of Georgia.
One other corporate welfare program on the hit list is the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. The blueprint calls for dialing back the Energy Department’s renewable energy subsidies and concentrating “funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the Office of Nuclear Energy, the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, and the Fossil Energy Research and Development program on limited, early-stage applied energy research and development activities where the Federal role is stronger.”
Also on the chopping block are federal funds for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s commentary editor, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
