We Give Foreigners Taxpayer Money to Import Stuff from America. What?

Is there anything the U.S. government doesn’t take taxpayer dollars to do?

Here’s a lesser-known function of your hard-earned money: providing backing for people in other countries to buy things from America.

Come again? Yes, that’s right. Let’s say Air China wants to purchase some Boeing jets. To encourage that purchase, America’s Export-Import Bank could loan Air China the money. If Air China were to default on the loan, U.S. taxpayers would be left on the hook.

Put simply, taxpayers should not be financing this kind of “bank”—which is “little more than a fund for corporate welfare,” as candidate Barack Obama described it in 2008.
MORE