When Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, his immediate goal was to rebuild and strengthen the domestic economy and create jobs amid the Great Depression. One way he did this was through the promotion of American exports to the world. Roosevelt’s subsequent New Deal legislation established a series of federal programs designed to put millions of Americans back to work and stabilize the country’s financial system. Part of that effort was the establishment of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (ExIm), which Roosevelt created via executive order, to provide credit to foreign buyers of U.S.-produced goods.
Since its creation, ExIm has helped bring more than $400 billion worth of U.S. exports to buyers around the world. It provided financing to rebuild Europe after World War II through the Marshall Plan, funded the purchase of American goods to help build the Pan American Highway and the Burma Road, and spurred economic development at home and abroad. In fiscal year 2024, the bank supported an estimated $8.4 billion in U.S. export sales and approximately 38,000 jobs across the nation. It is an agency whose impact is both significant and important.
Yet ExIm has sometimes failed to keep pace with modern challenges, such as climate change, or to maintain the highest standards for human rights. For example, during the first Trump administration, the bank committed $5 billion to TotalEnergies’ Mozambique liquified natural gas project—a project that has faced legal complaints claiming that they had been complicit in the alleged murder of more than 100 locals by security forces charged with protecting the project. When these atrocities were reported, both Britain and the Netherlands pulled their export financing commitments, but ExIm continued its support for the project.
And this is only one of the fossil fuel projects ExIm currently backs. In late 2024, the bank also supported oil and gas projects in Malaysia and Guyana despite the United States signing on to the Glasgow Statement in 2021, pledging to end direct public financing for fossil fuel projects overseas.
But it doesn’t need to be this way. ExIm is an independent, executive branch institution that requires legislative reauthorization on a periodic basis, including this year. The reauthorization process provides an important opportunity to reimagine and improve the bank, turning it into an important driver of climate action, industrial development, domestic job creation, and American competitiveness. Moreover, given the Trump administration’s corrupt policy decisions, the reauthorization process provides an opportunity for Congress to place guardrails on the bank’s loans to keep its financing from benefiting the presidential administration or its wealthy donors and friends.
Put another way, reauthorizing ExIm “as is” will not help the bank achieve its full potential. But improvements to the bank’s charter, metrics, and processes can foster changes that would transform the bank into an engine of climate action, working-class jobs, and industrial development. Policymakers engaged in the reauthorization process should make this their goal.
ExIm can become a driver of U.S. geostrategic interests, climate action, and values
As the world changes, ExIm must keep pace to ensure U.S. exports and workers remain competitive in the global market. Strategic financing decisions at ExIm in support of cleaner manufactured goods and a stronger domestic industrial base would produce a more impactful, modernized bank. This can be achieved through the recommendations that follow.
Prohibit financing for projects that would raise domestic fuel prices
Before committing financing to a project, ExIm should analyze the project’s impact on domestic fuel prices as part of its economic impact analysis. ExIm support for projects that would increase combustion of fuels overseas or otherwise raise fuel prices for Americans should be prohibited. With some fossil fuel companies on track to earn nearly $3,000 per second in 2026, there is no need for taxpayers to offer additional support to their exports. ExIm support should be reserved for American industries truly in need of public financing and export assistance.
Eliminate the statutory default rate cap to allow for higher risk/higher impact investments
The goal of ExIm should be to assume a level of risk that the private sector is unwilling to assume (or charges too much for) in order to support U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives, domestic job creation, and the decarbonization of the economy. This would be greatly advanced if Congress eliminated ExIm’s statutory default rate cap of 2 percent. ExIm’s historic default rate is less than 1 percent, and the bank has more than $2 billion in reserves, meaning it has the capacity to absorb a higher rate of default. The benefit of this change would be more money flowing to buyers of U.S. goods (and potentially U.S. domestic producers), further supporting the bank’s mission. It would also support additional lending that could be catalytic for small and medium-sized exporters.
Enhance the bank’s Make More in America Initiative
The Make More in America Initiative has demonstrated new ways the bank can be impactful for small and medium-sized domestic manufacturers, particularly in sectors critical to the country’s long-term security, sustainability, and resilience. The program should become a feature of the bank’s overall lending strategy with new funding and a new outreach campaign to make U.S. producers aware of the bank’s ability to finance their future growth in the United States. In addition to a much larger budget, Make More in America financing should be flexible enough to support U.S.-based manufacturers to expand their domestic production capacity, with the presumption that additional capacity will be used to export products to markets around the world.
Allow ExIm to support industrial decarbonization efforts
Since many countries are considering a carbon border adjustment mechanism, it is important that U.S. industry decarbonize its production or face challenges in exporting competitively abroad. Congress should therefore update ExIm’s charter to enable the financing of projects that help domestic industry decarbonize, especially in industries such as steel, aluminum, and others that must meet carbon thresholds to compete effectively in international markets.
Focus financing on small and medium-sized supply chain firms
Congress should update ExIm’s charter to include a specific focus on supporting the financing needs of small and medium-sized manufacturers that provide parts and materials to a larger exporter’s supply chain (even if the manufacturer does not itself export). Such a change would make ExIm’s financing far more impactful to the nearly 50 percent of workers employed by small businesses in the United States and support the bank’s mandate to dedicate at least 30 percent of its aggregate loans, guarantees, and insurance authority to small businesses.
Strengthen labor and human rights standards
Both to support unionized labor in the United States and also higher labor and human rights standards for users of ExIm financing abroad, ExIm should establish clear high-standard requirements for projects that accept its financing—and work with other likeminded governments to develop comparable standards for projects that receive support from their export credit agencies.
Establish a national interest window that incentivizes strategic risk
While still demand driven, ExIm must do a better job supporting U.S. competitiveness in strategic sectors and projects around the world. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently called for the creation of a new “national interest window” at ExIm—a strong recommendation that Congress enact in the reauthorization process. Lending aimed at rebuilding domestic manufacturing, securing critical supply chains, and overcoming the distortionary effect of China’s nonmarket practices should be evaluated on its contribution to national, strategic objectives in addition to a project’s financial certainty, with the bank willing to take on greater risk if the project serves a greater strategic purpose. Given the added risk involved in such projects, it is reasonable for ExIm to dedicate a strategic reserve fund to absorb any losses that may occur from such strategic lending.
ExIm reauthorization must include guardrails against Trump corruption
Members of Congress should think twice before voting to reauthorize ExIm in 2026 if doing so means voting for a bank that does not have in place meaningful guardrails to short-circuit the Trump administration’s corrupt policies or its support for fossil fuel interests.
The Trump administration has already demonstrated that the government can be used to derive personal gain and to benefit allies. Imagine if ExIm financing were used to support the president’s family’s crypto currency holdings or to support oil and gas development in Venezuela. The Trump administration has already tried to severely weaken the United States’ electric vehicle industry and attacked climate action, which is to the benefit of the fossil fuel industry. It is not a far leap to think that ExIm could be used for the same purposes unless very clear, very specific limits are imposed on the White House’s ability to exert its influence on the bank’s decisions (and/or personally profit from them).
Develop and enforce strong anticorruption standards
ExIm should not be used as a tool to enrich any foreign or domestic elected officials. Corporations seeking support from ExIm should be required to take compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a step further by submitting a conflict-of-interest disclosure identifying any relationship with U.S. federal elected officials, cabinet members, or their family members. An independent body should be established within ExIm to review disclosures and determine whether a potential investment adheres to these anticorruption standards.
Conclusion
ExIm’s mission has changed before—when it was created, one of its goals was to support trade with the newly established Soviet Union. It can—and should—change again, aligning its tools to the realities of a modern economy shaped by geostrategic competition, the need to support quality working-class jobs, climate change, and potentially corrupt policies such as some of those advanced by the Trump administration thus far. Congress should use the ExIm reauthorization process to demand nothing less.