General Electric, which expects to announce by year’s end whether or not it will move its headquarters out of Connecticut, said it plans to move 500 U.S. production jobs to Europe.
At the center of the company’s decision is Congress’s failure to replenish funding for the U.S. Export Import Bank, which ran out of money on July 1, GE said. That has caused GE to start talks with a number of foreign export banks, which often require production and jobs to be located within their respective borders.
The jobs GE will move are currently based in Texas, South Carolina, Maine and New York.
“While our preference is to continue producing power generation equipment in our best U.S. factories, without customer access to the U.S. Ex-Im bank, we have no choice but to move our work to places that will offer export credit financing of these projects,” the company said in a statement, which also called on Congress to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank.
GE said it is bidding on $11 billion worth of projects that require export financing. The company said it has reached a deal with France’s export credit agency to provide a line of credit for global power projects it wins.
GE said it is also required to move final assembly operations for its aeroderivatives turbines to Hungary and China.
GE has been public in its displeasure with Connecticut lawmakers, who this summer authorized a unitary tax on companies with locations in multiple states.
Since then, a number of states have courted the company.
