The Boeing Co. popped up again in the latest debate between Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.
“Do you know what the other name of the Export-Import Bank is, what it’s called in Washington?” Sanders said. “It’s called the Bank of Boeing, because Boeing itself gets 40 percent of the money discharged by the Export-Import Bank.”
Sanders’ criticism of Boeing and the Ex-Im Bank underscored that he is left of Clinton on economics and has much more skepticism of big corporations than she does.
His 40 percent might be a bit high, though. In 2013, Boeing customers received financing worth about $8.3 billion, about 30.3 percent of Ex-Im money that year, according to a 2015 study by the Mercatus Center, a Conservative economics think tank at George Mason University. From 2007 to 2013, foreign aviation customers received about 51 percent of Ex-Im money, the study’s authors found.
Boeing executives have said the bank is critical to closing airplane sales with buyers based overseas.
Foreign oil and gas companies are other big beneficiaries of the Ex-Im Bank, which provides financing to foreign companies buying U.S.-made goods and services.
During the debate, which was hosted by CNN, Clinton criticized Sanders as the only Democratic senator to vote against its renewal late last year. Tea Party Republicans had pushed to kill the bank, which they say is nothing more than a corporate subsidy. However, its supporters in Congress managed to reauthorize it until 2019.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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