Industry: Ex-Im Expiration Puts U.S. Bizav Sales at Risk

Business aircraft and helicopter manufacturers are concerned about long-term competitive ramifications after Congress permitted the Export-Import Bank’s charter to lapse on June 30.  Congress left town late last week before renewing the bank’s authorization. While the Senate might take up reauthorization when it returns from a break this week, the House still appears to be stalled on the issue. The bank, which is funded through September 30, will continue to operate and process existing loans but is unable to process new loans.

Business and general aviation once accounted for less than $100 million of the bank’s lending activities per year, but as international exports have increased so too has the bank’s lending. GAMA estimates that the bank has backed nearly $2 billion in business aircraft loans since 2012.

“It’s been a major part of our business,” said a Textron spokesman. Citing 2013 results, the spokesman noted that approximately 60 percent of Textron Financial’s business was for non-U.S. customers and about 90 percent of that business was backed by either the U.S. or Canadian export-import banks. Textron Financial primarily finances business aircraft and commercial helicopter loans for Textron Aviation or Bell Helicopter.

Before he retired last month, Gulfstream chief Larry Flynn expressed his company’s support for Ex-Im financing in a letter to the editor published in the Savannah Morning News, saying it provides an even competitive field for “U.S. companies like Gulfstream that compete with foreign companies.” Flynn added that all of Gulfstream’s primary competitors are non-U.S. companies and cited as an example a sale for eight aircraft it won because Ex-Im provided the loan guarantee. “Without Ex-Im, that sale would have gone to one of Gulfstream’s foreign competitors and taken away from our U.S. employees,” he wrote. In fact, it was a Gulfstream sale that pushed Ex-Im’s support of business aircraft sales over the $1 billion mark since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2012. That sale involved a $300 million loan guarantee to Minsheng Financial Leasing Company Ltd. for the export of Gulfstream business jets.

“For general aviation manufacturing, 50 percent of aircraft deliveries are outside the U.S. in any given year,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce, adding that not only aircraft manufacturers, but their entire supply chain benefit from Ex-Im. “Reauthorization will keep manufacturers on a fair, level playing field to compete against businesses in the more than 60 other countries that have their own national export credit agencies. It remains truly baffling why some members would want to debilitate U.S. manufacturers by not reauthorizing the Bank, particularly when there are challenging headwinds in export markets.”

GAMA, along with the Aerospace Industries Association, has strongly urged Congress to renew reauthorization. GAMA’s Bunce has noted the importance the bank has played in the agriculture market, pointing to an overwhelming majority of Ex-Im financed sales for Air Tractor. At one point last year, six of seven aircraft on the Air Tractor line were Ex-Im backed.

Hartzell Propeller president Joe Brown told lawmakers last year that he cut the company’s capital investment project list by 50 percent for 2015 “because I cannot risk anything but the most conservative investment decisions,” given the politics surrounding Ex-Im.

Ex-Im also has backed hundreds of millions in loans for helicopter manufacturers such as Sikorsky and AgustaWestland. In April, the bank announced the guarantee of a $22.4 million loan for the sale of U.S.-made AgustaWestland AW139s to North Pole Investments in Panama for offshore oil and gas support.

“In our 81-year history, we’ve been reauthorized 16 times with overwhelming bipartisan majorities,” Ex-Im chairman Fred Hochberg last week told the Foreign Policy’s Competiveness ForumNow. Hochberg noted that more than two-thirds the Senate and 250 House members have expressed support for the bank’s reauthorization. “In this day and age, that sort of consensus doesn’t happen very often. You might think that would be enough to keep a vital tool that serves job growth at no cost up and running.” But the bank continues to draw staunch opposition from lawmakers, particularly from senior House members who have argued that Ex-Im competes against private banks and charge that it is a form of corporate cronyism.