GE is moving 500 jobs overseas, citing lapse of U.S. Export-Import Bank

On Tuesday, GE announced that it is shipping 500 jobs from Texas, South Carolina, New York, and Maine to factories in France, China, and Hungary because House Republicans won't reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), whose authorization expired in July after 81 years. "The U.S. remains the only major economy in the world without an Export Bank," GE said. "This is a choice that was forced on us," added GE Vice Chairman John Rice.

The Senate reauthorized the Ex-Im Bank in July, and a majority of the House backs reauthorization, too. But "House Republicans backers, including Speaker John Boehner, aren't willing to defend a small, esoteric agency against passionate conservatives," Politico notes. Those conservatives called GE's outsourcing of jobs a political stunt to put pressure on Congress to revive the bank, which mostly guarantees loans for foreign customers buying U.S. goods. They noted that 500 jobs is just a sliver of GE's U.S. workforce of 136,000.

But other U.S. companies, including midsize manufacturers and global powerhouses like Boeing, Caterpillar, and Dow Chemical, say they are also near having to turn to foreign export banks — and shipping jobs overseas — if the Ex-Im Bank isn't reauthorized.

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