Competitors around the world are able to offer government-backed financing packages to potential customers as a part of the bidding process. The Export-Import Bank of the United States serves this critical role for U.S.-based corporations. The Ex-Im Bank provides loans to global customers, which allow companies like Westinghouse and our suppliers, to compete with the quality of our products and services. Without the Ex-Im Bank, chances to compete for global business are severely limited for Westinghouse and for our 7,000 suppliers. Across America – tens of thousands of small business suppliers benefit from partnerships with large exporters who rely on Ex-Im Bank.
The Ex-Im Bank provides loans that are paid back with interest to the U.S. Treasury. These loans not only allow U.S. manufacturers and suppliers to remain competitive, they have also benefited taxpayers – by $2.7 billion over the last six years alone.
Our U.S. suppliers represent a fortified supply chain in the U.S. that was reestablished only recently, with the new nuclear plants being built here after a 30-year hiatus. Manufacturing history has a lesson to teach us. As competition changed over the past few decades from local to global, U.S. businesses were impacted. When the U.S. could not support some of our manufacturers to remain price-competitive in the global market, many U.S. jobs were lost. We need the Ex-Im Bank to retain and grow U.S. exports. Our 7,000 suppliers alone represent approximately 20,000 high-skill, well-paying jobs in the U.S.
The Ex-Im Bank is so important to our suppliers that on Feb. 25-26, a number of them joined the more than 650 U.S. small businesses, suppliers and local chambers in Washington D.C., to garner Congressional support of the Ex-Im Bank. You can watch live-streamed discussions on exports, jobs and global competitiveness on the Bloomberg Government report and learn more about Ex-Im reauthorization efforts impacting the nuclear industry on the Nuclear Energy Institute’s website.
On Jan. 22, U.S. Export-Import Bank Chairman Hochberg visited Westinghouse to join a media roundtable discussion concerning U.S. Ex-Im Bank reauthorization and tour our high-tech instrumentation and control manufacturing facility in Warrendale, Pa. (USA). Three of our suppliers supported the effort, one of whom, Melissa Dubinsky, vice president of power generation project development for our supplier Rizzo Associates, said, “Lacking the Export-Import Bank financing, U.S. vendors and Rizzo, as a supply chain vendor, are at a distinct disadvantage, and practically speaking we’re eliminated at the start.” You can listen to excerpts from this event and read the related article published in the Pittsburgh Business Times.
If you want to learn more about this vital engine to the U.S. economy, read more on the Export-Import Bank of the United States website.
Westinghouse and President and CEO Danny Roderick express gratitude to those who participated in our recent media roundtable panel featuring our honored guest Fred Hochberg, chairman, U.S. Export-Import Bank; and Westinghouse suppliers Dennis Tkacs, marketing manager, Emerson; Jiho Jang, general manager, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction; and Melissa Dubinsky, vice president of Power Generation Projects, Rizzo Associates. This event was held Jan. 22, 2015, at the Westinghouse instrumentation and control manufacturing site in Warrendale, Pa. (USA).
Kevin Kilmer
Director, Global Inventory Management, Regional Buying Center and Supply Chain Management Operations
Westinghouse Electric Company