(1) Last Thursday, the U.S. Export-Import Bank denied loan guarantees to Reliance Power Ltd., an Indian utility building a coal-fired power plant near Sasan, India. Bucyrus International Inc., a South Milwaukee-based manufacturer, was ready to export some $310 million in mining equipment—and about $600 million over three years—but Reliance’s order was contingent on the favorable financing rates provided by the Ex-Im guarantee. Reliance cancelled the order Monday morning and will reboot with Bucyrus’s competitors in China or Belarus if the bank doesn’t reverse in the coming days.
The Reliance-Bucyrus deal met all of the Export-Import Bank’s qualifying criteria, including the tougher environmental and CO2 standards that the White House has imposed over the last several months.
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Those deliberations can’t have been too careful, however, given that the Sasan plant is already under construction and is scheduled to open in 2012. The coal to feed it will still be mined, and demon carbon will still be emitted. The only difference is that an American business, and the 1,000 or so people who work there or for the companies in its 13-state Midwest supply chain and were depending on the project, will no longer benefit.
(2) In February, for instance, the Administration approved a $528 million low-cost loan to Fisker Automotive, which plans to build a luxury hybrid car that will sell for $48,000 before Uncle Sam’s $7,500 tax credit. Fisker’s plant is in Mr. Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
And the upshot from today’s Wall Street Journal …
The Bucyrus travesty is a preview of the consequences of the cap-and-tax program that Democrats are still trying to ram through Congress, and the peculiar income redistribution that it entails: taking from the middle class that depends on coal for jobs and power and giving to politically connected investors and the affluent who can afford to pay $40,000 for a car. Maybe Mr. Obama will explain to Bucyrus workers today why they are less deserving than Fisker Auto’s.
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