Quote from: zedicus on August 17, 2014, 05:13:37 PM

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Quote from: NewLiberty on August 15, 2014, 08:56:37 AM

Quote from: zedicus on August 15, 2014, 01:36:34 AM

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Quote from: noviapriani on July 23, 2014, 05:15:39 PM

Should it stay or should it go? It is little more than thinly disguised corporate welfare.

It should go. Its just another market distorting corporate subsidy at taxpayer expense.

If it were to go wouldn't it put American companies (and the US economy) at a competitive disadvantage? Hint: the answer is yes because most other industrialized countries have similar subsidies. The result of shutting the ex-im bank would be that the US economy would grow less then it otherwise would and jobs would be relocated overseas that would otherwise be competitive in the US.

Just because other countries tax their people in order to sell things to us at under-market prices, we should that favor in return?
Is the goal is to move manufacturing into this country in those industries so that we can get the secrets of foreign production techniques?
Is there a special interest for subsidizing a particular industry at the expense of all the others for strategic reasons?

If we don't do this then our companies will be at an international disadvantage. if they are at a disadvantage like this then they would need to employ less people, which would shrink the tax base. if the tax base is less then in order to collect the same tax revenue overall tax rates will need to rise.

Doing it also puts "our" companies at an international disadvantage.
It marries them to the state, making them dependent on subsidy so fatter and lazier than needed. That it does so by killing off other companies that would have survived but for the marginal tax to support the favored few (minus the losses by running it through the bureaucracy) is a bit of economic self destruction.

Doing this sort of thing does accomplish something, it creates the new industry of government begging for the folks that lobby for these handouts. GDP measures that as a plus, but it oughtn't. It produces nothing.

No it really doesn't put our companies at a disadvantage. As stated above US companies would need to offer payment terms that are somehow better then what would otherwise be available if it were not for the export0import bank.

This is correct. If it was not for the ex-im bank orders for products would go to companies based overseas and employees based overseas would be used to fill these orders. Period.

It is almost like every country is subsidizing their own country's industrial complex, in similar ways that central banks are all weakening their local currencies.