Unleash the Export-Import Bank to outcompete China

Congress faces a stark choice this year: strengthen America’s ability to compete abroad or let China dominate global markets. At the end of this year, the charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (known widely as EXIM) expires, stranding over $70 billion in projects sitting in its deal pipeline. These projects include important strategic energy and critical minerals projects, and would support over 45,000 U.S. jobs. Congress must act by Dec. 31 to keep these projects on track or U.S. workers will pay the price and America’s competitors will fill the gap.

Reauthorizing and modernizing EXIM will supercharge one of America’s most powerful tools to strengthen U.S. economic competitiveness and energy leadership at a time when aggressive, pro-energy development is needed on the global stage — and is being provided by our greatest adversary.

Since 2015, Beijing has poured at least $446 billion into global energy infrastructure and exports, nearly 10 times what the United States has invested. Chinese energy technologies aren’t being built because they are better, they’re being built because China’s state banks arrive with heavy subsidies and predatory loans.

Our strategy should be uniquely American to beat this kind of state-directed competition. EXIM operates at no cost to American taxpayers. It doesn’t crowd out private capital — it steps in where private lenders won’t go alone or when foreign governments have already put a thumb on the scale. We should use EXIM as a key to unlock global sales. Leveraging our dynamic private capital markets through EXIM unleashes American innovators and builders at home, who then export our leadership and sell U.S. energy solutions to the world.

A modern, well-capitalized EXIM will build on American strengths in technologies like nuclear energy, liquefied natural gas and geothermal into signed contracts instead of missed opportunities.

But EXIM competes with one hand tied behind its back; instead of standing alone as an example of American innovation, it stands alone as an example of American bureaucratic excess. Its culture of risk aversion runs deep, resulting in EXIM leaving three-quarters of its lending authority untouched even as our adversaries lean into cutting-edge projects.

EXIM’s recent Competitiveness Report found governments are using export credit at the highest levels seen in a decade and relying on these agencies to win projects in strategic industries. While foreign governments finance aggressively to win global contracts, American exporters are left at a serious disadvantage, which an authorization lapse would exacerbate.

American businesses have paid this price before. When EXIM lost its authorization and board quorum from 2015 to 2019, American exporters lost business to foreign competitors. A bipartisan, 10 year reauthorization of EXIM, the longest term in the bank’s history, will send a signal to American workers and our global competition Washington’s commitment to invest in the success of American business abroad.

To arm EXIM with a genuine competitive edge and foster the export of innovative technologies, it needs a modernized approach to risk management and project selection. In June, EXIM’s advisory committee, an expert panel of external industry, finance and labor leaders, recommended eliminating the existing 2 percent default rate shutdown trigger and implementing bolder risk standards. These modernizations will allow the bank to back transactions that advance American national and economic interests while upholding EXIM’s strong financial track record.

American companies are building the energy technologies the world wants to buy. The country financing the next decade’s energy infrastructure and critical minerals supply chains will set the terms of engagement this century and determine if they will be rooted in peace, prosperity and power or heavy-handed government oppression. Congress must reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for the long haul, equip it to compete, then let American innovators, workers and technology do the rest. The alternative is watching China power the next decade on its own terms.

Kevin Cramer is North Dakota’s junior U.S. senator and a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.