“We can’t unilaterally stop export financing when all of our trading partners do it, and as you know they do it much more than we do,” said the first-term Senator from Cincinnati.
And those who don’t support the re-authorization, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Portman said, “you’ve got to explain why you think we should lose thousands of good-paying jobs in a state like Ohio because that’s what’s going to happen.”
Kasich, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, has called the federal bank a form of corporate welfare.
Several Butler County businesses — including corporate giants like AK Steel and Western States Machine Co. — are among dozens of Southwest Ohio businesses and more than 300 Ohio businesses that use the Export-Import Bank, commonly referenced as the Ex-Im Bank.
“If you want to export from the United States to some of these countries that are growing in Asia and Africa, and you’re competing with companies from places like Europe or Japan or China, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back because they have bigger export subsidies than we do already, and if we cut off our financing for exports, we will not be able to compete and we’ll lose jobs in Ohio,” Portman said.
Last year, the Ex-Im Bank supported more than $27 billion in exports, and more than $250 million of those export dollars came from Ohio.
“When I was U.S. Trade Representative, I worked hard to get every country in the world to reduce and eventually eliminate these export financing arrangements and subsidies and I think that’s what our goal ought to be,” Portman said. “But in the meantime, if we just disarm ourselves and these other countries continue to provide the financing, we will lose jobs.”
If the Ex-Im Bank is not reauthorized, Portman said he’s already had Ohio companies show him their plans to move out of Ohio and “move them into countries that provide these kinds of export financing.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, voiced this week is support of Congress’s need to re-authorize the bank that companies utlize to leverage money used to export to other countries. Just as Portman said Thursday, Brown said on Wednesday the need to re-authroize the bank is “essential” as it helps spur job growth, as well as the production of more manufacutirng goods and exports of those products.
Portman’s political opponents for his senate seat in 2016, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, may agree with his support for the reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank — one of the few areas of agreement — but both disagree with his free trade agreement record.
While Portman didn’t talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Thursday, his Democratic opponents did.
“You’d be hard pressed to find any international free trade agreement over the past 15 years that has actually helped American workers,” said Dale Butland, Sittenfeld’s campaign spokesman.
Strickland said the debate on trade deals “is not about exports, it’s about outsourcing.”
”We don’t just remember (the North American Free Trade Agreement), many communities in Ohio still feel the pain it caused, and we won’t stand by while Washington makes secret deals to pass NAFTA 2.0,” Strickland said.
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