Trump budget could dredge up battle over Export-Import Bank
Sean Spicer punted on the question of whether President Trump supports the Export-Import Bank on Tuesday, after the New York Times reported that the agency would be eliminated in the president's forthcoming budget.
The Export-Import Bank sounds like an independent agency Trump would love — it subsidizes foreign purchases of American goods, thus providing a boost to manufacturing employment. But free market fundamentalists hate the bank, arguing that it unfairly subsidizes one sector, thus diverting resources by government fiat from other enterprises that might be more deserving.
What's next: The president put a small government ideologue, Mick Mulvaney, in charge of his budget office, but also hasn't let conservative priorities get in the way of his message of supporting American jobs above all else. Watch to see how steadfastly he will defend such cuts in the face of lobbying by high-profile companies like Boeing.