Just twenty-two months ago, the Waukesha, Wisconsin General Electric factory was flourishing.
It was churning out gas engines on the regular and putting hundreds of American machinists to work.
In fact, the factory was doing do so well that President Obama came to town to praise it as an example of how American manufacturing was finally bouncing back after the Great Recession.
But then in September of this year, GE suddenly announced that it was closing the Waukesha facility and moving its 350 jobs across the border to Canada.
That’s right, Canada!
Which raises the question: Why would a proud American company like GE move one of its most famous factories, one that the President publicly praised, to, you know, Canada?
The answer to that question is actually pretty easy.
GE moved its factory Canada because Republicans killed the Export-Import bank.
Formed in 1934 to help finance and subsidize American trade abroad, the Export-Import bank was, for most of its history, pretty uncontroversial.
And for good reason too.
Since it gave money to foreign companies to help them buy American products, the Bank helped support hundreds of thousands of good American jobs.
And since the money that it gave out came in the form of loans, so those countries had to pay us interest to buy our manufactured goods, it also made a $1 billion profit for Treasury Department.
So, help make American companies more competitive abroad, support jobs at home, and make money for the government - sounds like a win-win for everyone involved , right?
Not according to the Tea Party.
This year hard-right Tea Party members of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives successfully blocked the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, on the grounds that it was “corporate welfare” and “crony capitalism.”
And so, on July 1 of this year, the 81-year-old bank’s charter expired, leaving its future in limbo.
This left the United States pretty much alone in the developed world as a country without a functioning export bank, so companies started moving their American factories to countries that do have export-import banks.
