Project 2025 Calls for Abolishing the Export-Import Bank, Eliminating a Key Tool for Small Exporters

Project 2025's proposal to abolish the Export-Import Bank is a textbook case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The argument, led by Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center, is that EXIM is a 'government-granted privilege' that mainly benefits giant firms like Boeing while putting taxpayers at risk. But this framing ignores the program's distributive consequence: for small and medium-sized manufacturers—the very businesses de Rugy claims to champion—EXIM's loan guarantees, working capital guarantees, and export-credit insurance are often the only way to compete abroad. When EXIM was incapacitated for four years (2015–2019), its small-business share actually increased, and the program continued to return more to the Treasury than it cost in subsidies.

The real effects of abolition would be regressive. Large corporations like Boeing retain access to private capital markets and foreign export credit agencies (ECAs) from competitor nations. Small exporters do not. Eliminating EXIM would force these smaller firms to either lose contracts or relocate production to countries with active ECAs, exporting jobs rather than goods. The fiscal impact is straightforward: EXIM's credit subsidies are scored as costing roughly $55 million in net revenue in FY2024, while its financing supports over $5 billion in small-business exports annually. Abolishing it would eliminate that net revenue stream and likely increase the trade deficit as foreign ECAs fill the gap without any reciprocal U.S. requirements.

The alternative is not to abolish EXIM but to expand and reform it. Congress should strengthen the 'Make More in America Initiative', which scales financing based on U.S. jobs supported, and require that a larger share of EXIM's authority go to small businesses—not just the 25% they currently receive. A full-employment industrial policy requires an active export credit agency that works for small firms, not a boutique program for the Fortune 500. Defending EXIM is a fight for the economic dignity of small manufacturers whose livelihood depends on exporting.