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| On February 2, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6581 creataing the Export Import Bank of Washington. The stated goal was "to aid in financing and to facilitate exports and imports and the exchange of commodities between the United States and other Nations or the agencies or nationals thereof", with the immediate goal of making loans to the Soviet Union. The Bank's first transaction was a $3.8 million loan to Cuba in 1935 for the purchase of U.S. silver ingots. Congress continued the bank as a government agency, using a series of laws between 1935 and 1943 to place it under various government departments, before making it an independent agency on July 31, 1945, with the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945. On March 13, 1968, further legislation changed the name to "Export-Import Bank of the United States". The Export-Import Bank of the United States is the official credit agency of the United States federal government. |
