General Electric (
www.ge.com) has announced that it plans to move around 500 US manufacturing jobs to Europe and China because it can no longer access financing from the Government-run Export Import Bank (known as ExIm).
The largest industrial conglomerate in the USA, GE said it will move production of some heavy-duty gas turbines (and some 400 jobs) to Belfort (France) in exchange for a credit line from Coface, a state-run agency that manages export guarantees. US plants in Greenville (South Carolina), Schenectady (New York) and Bangor (Maine) will all suffer as a result, but no US facility will close, a spokesman said.
GE also said that around 100 final-assembly jobs for smaller turbine generator sets will move next year from Houston to Hungary and China. The company is bidding on $11 billion worth of international power projects that require export-credit agency financing, according to the spokesman.
Stephen Fincher, the Republican Representative for Tennessee’s Congressional district since 2011, said: “Law makers must find a strategy to revive ExIm” after letting its charter expire at the end of June.
“This is what happens when Congress sits idly by while thousands of jobs are on the line.”
GE vice-chairman John Rice said: “The lack of clarity on whether ExIm will ever resume lending has left companies having to make alternative plans”. He added: “If you are an export credit agency outside the USA, you are now in the process of ‘rolling out the red carpet’ to US manufacturers. There are many other companies that are impacted by this.”
Mr Rice said that he expects the company to announce deals with other foreign export-credit agencies in the near future. “If ExIm isn’t going to happen or it’s going to be a regular fight to be re-authorised, we’ve got to make other plans.”
Meanwhile, Boeing announced recently that it has lost a potential deal to supply aircraft to Singapore’s Pacific airline, as it could not supply ExIm guarantees. The US aerospace group said the situation will influence “future workforce decisions”.
Boeing spokesman Gayla Keller said: “US exporters across the country are operating at a significant disadvantage in their overseas sales campaigns and are facing tough decisions because Congress has failed to re-authorise Ex-Im.”