On Justin Amash's Home Turf, Sen. Gary Peters pushes Export-Import Bank

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By Matt Vande Bunte

Mill Steel Co. had a prospective customer in Mexico. The Grand Rapids-area manufacturer planned to cut coils of steel to the customer's specifications and ship the product over the border, where the steel would get stamped into auto parts.

But the customer's credit history made Mill Steel a bit uneasy about the deal. Enter the federal Export-Import Bank, which backed the trade and made company officers more comfortable selling to the foreign buyer.

"We might have sold them anyway, but probably not because (it's a competitive market) and when you have a credit you're not sure of you're going to raise the price" and maybe not get the deal, said David Samrick, president and CEO of the business on 36th Street SE in Cascade Township.

"(The Ex-Im Bank) does change the environment significantly. It's amazing to me that Michigan congressmen could be against this."

Mill Steel hosted U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, on Friday, June 19, for a press conference urging re-authorization of the 80-year-old federal bank. There's support from President Obama and the U.S. Senate, but not in the U.S. House where two West Michigan members -- U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township, and U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland -- are opposed.

The bank's charter is set to expire at the end of June.

"If the Ex-Im goes away, (the export business it fosters) will be in jeopardy and would have an impact on employment here in the Grand Rapids area," Peters said after touring Mill Steel. "If we let ours go away, we're going to be at a disadvantage" competing against exporters in other countries that have similar banks.

Peters characterized the bank's re-authorization as "good common sense" that's getting torpedoed on "partisan ideological grounds." Though many Republicans support the bank -- the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce was on hand at Mill Steel, for example -- other Republicans want to let the bank die.

Huizenga, in a newspaper column this spring, cited concern about the bank's financial track record as well instances of corruption. "With our nation's debt over $18 trillion," he wrote, "do we really want to have the government play banker?"

Amash calls Ex-Im Bank practices "cronyism and corporate welfare."
"It's wrong for the government to use Ex-Im to redistribute money from regular Americans to businesses, large or small," Amash said in a statement through a spokesman in Grand Rapids. "It's wrong for the government to advantage any business at the expense of regular Americans and the overall economy.

"Other countries that have similar programs to prop up particular industries are simply harming their own people and damaging their own economies. Ending Ex-Im allows us to avoid the same mistake."

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