The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM Bank) is the official export credit agency (ECA) of the U.S. federal government, operating as a wholly owned government corporation. It is an institution, not a scheme or a concept, whose mission is to finance and facilitate U.S. exports of goods and services to support U.S. employment. The EXIM Bank was originally established on February 2, 1934, by an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Export-Import Bank of Washington, as part of the New Deal. It was created to aid in financing exports and imports, with the immediate goal of making loans to the USSR and Latin America, and its first transaction was a $3.8 million loan to Cuba in 1935 for the purchase of U.S. silver ingots. The problem it solved was filling the financing gap left by private sector lenders who were unable or unwilling to accept the political or commercial risk inherent in international deals, especially during the Great Depression.
The EXIM Bank operates under a statutory charter, the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, as amended, which made it an independent agency within the executive branch. Its core mechanism is to supplement, not compete with, private capital by providing financing for transactions that would otherwise not occur. The bank's main products include loan guarantees to commercial banks, export credit insurance to protect against foreign buyer nonpayment, and, more selectively, direct loans to foreign buyers of U.S. goods and services. A key provision is that EXIM must demonstrate that its support is necessary to make a transaction viable on acceptable terms, and it is directed to provide guarantees and credit at rates competitive with those offered by other countries' ECAs.
The EXIM Bank connects to the broader concept of export credit agencies (ECAs), as most developed economies have their own similar government-backed institutions to support their exporters. It is also related to other U.S. export promotion efforts, such as those by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). The bank's charter must be reauthorized by the U.S. Congress every few years. A significant recent change occurred in 2015, when its charter briefly lapsed, preventing it from engaging in new business until it was reauthorized later that year. The bank was most recently reauthorized in December 2019 as part of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (P.L. 116-94), extending its authority to conduct new business through December 31, 2026. This reauthorization also added a mandate to establish the China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP) to support U.S. exporters competing with the People's Republic of China (PRC), reflecting a shift toward strategic competition.