Keeping His Cool

Chances are that few, if any, of the many people milling around Reading Terminal Market late Thursday afternoon recognized the dignitary seated at the Bassetts Ice Cream counter.

He appeared not to have a care in the world as he worked his way through two scoops of green tea and then two more of pumpkin.

"I had ice cream. How can I be stressed?" Fred Hochberg said with a laugh, though stress he surely has.

As president of the Export-Import Bank, he leads a self-sustaining federal agency vital to enabling Bassetts and other businesses in the region, and throughout the United States, to export their products.

It's an 80-year-old agency fighting for its survival - and one that is on temporary life support.

Conservative lawmakers, among them House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), have called for closing Ex-Im, as it is known, contending that its mission is largely one of corporate welfare and noting that Boeing Co. is among its customers.

The aircraft manufacturer joined other Ex-Im supporters, including business-advocacy groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, in persuading House Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) to include in the recently passed government-funding bill an extension of the bank's charter, which was to have expired Sept. 30.

That gives Hochberg until June 30 to make the case for a five-year Ex-Im renewal - the average length of its 16 previous reauthorizations.

"We have a big challenge ahead of us," Hochberg said.

He plans to meet that, in part, by educating legislators on the bank's impact.

In fiscal year 2013, Ex-Im authorized $27 billion to support an estimated $37.4 billion in U.S. export sales and about 205,000 American jobs. The bank did a record 3,413 small-business transactions for the period, Hochberg said, estimating that nearly 90 percent of its customers are small businesses.

From fees and interest on its assistance - mostly insurance and working-capital loan guarantees - Ex-Im usually returns a profit to the Treasury. For fiscal 2013, that amounted to $1.1 billion; for fiscal 2014, $675 million. An Ex-Im spokesman attributed the drop to the increasing postrecession return of the private sector to financing export operations.

"We're Plan B," Hochberg said of Ex-Im's role. "Plan A is the private sector."

Hochberg spent about a half-hour with Bassetts president Michael Strange, hearing about the origins of the company, started in 1861 by Strange's great-great-grandfather Lewis D. Bassett on a Salem County farm.

He also asked about Bassetts' exporting experience in China since 2008 with trade-credit insurance from Ex-Im, which protects the company in the case of nonpayment.

Bassetts is close to completing a deal to export to Taiwan, for which Strange also plans to get trade-credit insurance from Ex-Im.

Without it, he said, he would have to limit further the credit he is willing to extend to his customers and require greater upfront payments. That likely will restrict the size of their orders, Strange said.

Exports are now 20 percent of Bassetts' total revenue, which Strange would not disclose. Of the Ex-Im charter controversy, he said: "I don't think there should even be a debate. Let's move on to something else."

Before Bassetts, Hochberg visited another local Ex-Im customer, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. in Coatesville, which designs, manufactures, and services helicopters, and addressed a lunch gathering of businesses and local lenders hosted by the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia, a nonprofit that helps Pennsylvania and New Jersey companies export.

The trade center's president, Linda Mysliwy Conlin, served at Ex-Im from 2004 to 2009, the last three years as vice chair and first vice president.

"This has been one of the most challenging reauthorization periods that I can recall," Conlin said last week.

She is urging small and medium-sized businesses "to share with their congressional representatives and senators the importance of Ex-Im bank." With 59 other countries having export-credit agencies, "why would we want to take away what's been a really important competitive tool?" Conlin asked.

Wondering the same was Susanne Svizeny, executive vice president and division manager for commercial banking at Wells Fargo, a provider of Ex-Im's working-capital loans. Under that arrangement, Ex-Im guarantees lines of credit Wells Fargo would be reluctant to issue on its own because of the perceived riskiness of foreign receivables.

"We've got to invest in agencies and organizations that are going to help us drive the economy," Svizeny said. "It just makes good, logical business and economic sense to me to reauthorize the charter. We're going to keep our fingers crossed."

$6B

Pa. exports supported

by Ex-Im Bank since 2007.

$5B

N.J. exports supported by the bank since 2007.

3,413

Small-business deals by Ex-Im Bank in fiscal year 2013.

205K

American jobs supported by Ex-Im in fiscal year 2013.EndText

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