Small businesses seeking to increase their overseas sales are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of loan guarantees by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), although a new analysis by a nonprofit government watchdog finds most of the funds are going to corporate giants and corrupt foreign regimes.
“Small businesses, supposedly the intended beneficiary of the Export-Import Bank, received only $54.8 billion of the over $234 billion in total assistance since 2007, or about 23 percent” of the bank’s total funding, according to the report by Open The Books (OTB), a Chicago-based nonprofit that monitors government spending.
By filing more than 40,000 federal Freedom of Information Act requests and posting the checkbooks of 49 state governments, OTB has posted to the internet more than $6 trillion in public spending. The nonprofit’s goal is to “post every dime in real-time.”
By far the biggest beneficiary of Ex-Im lending is Boeing Co., the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer and one of the world’s most successful designers and builders of commercial airliners.