Americans who own private jets need to pay more in taxes, President Obama argues. So it seems odd that foreign executives riding Gulfstream jets from Shanghai to Mumbai get U.S. subsidies from Obama's favorite export agency.The Export-Import Bank of the United States recently announced a milestone: Under Obama, the agency has subsidized the sale of $1 billion in private jet sales to overseas customers.
The billion dollars for foreigners’ private jets highlights the nature of Ex-Im and Obama’s industrial policy: In the name of boosting U.S. jobs, the government helps big businesses and the wealthy.
Obama pretends to oppose corporate jet subsidies. During the 2011 debt-ceiling fight, for example, Obama harped on “tax breaks for corporate jet owners,” mentioning it six times in a June 29 press conference.
In his first 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, Obama asked “Why wouldn't we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it.”
But Obama clearly doesn’t believe that foreign buyers of corporate jets need to pay "full freight."
Two months after Obama's 2011 press conference about tax breaks for corporate jets, the Ex-Im board approved a $75.8 million loan to help a Chinese company called ICBC Financial Leasing buy “business aircraft” from U.S. manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft.
ICBC is a subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial Commercial Bank of China. HawkerBeechcraft was at the time largely owned by Goldman Sachs.
So, amid contentious budget debates and calls for tax hikes and spending cuts, Ex-Im loaned $75.8 million in taxpayer money, at 1.68 percent, to the Chinese government so that it could buy private jets from Goldman Sachs. Why should taxpayers have to bear the risk and float such a loan?
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