No U.S. Financing for Iran Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Ms. HOYLE of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, April 15, I will vote No on H.R. 5921, the No Financing for Iran Act. While I agree with the bill's stated goal of preventing the Iranian government from accessing the U.S. financial system, the bill goes much further than that and has several issues.

Unfortunately, H.R. 5921 as written would likely inflict significant harm on small businesses in Oregon and across the country. The bill includes provisions to prevent the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. (Exlm Bank) from financing projects associated with Iran's government. However, under current U.S. policy, Exlm is already prohibited from doing business with the government of Iran and Iran-related sanctioned persons (as are all U.S. government entities and U.S. persons).

As Ranking Member Waters has noted, H.R. 5921's duplicative provisions will impose overly burdensome requirements on the Exlm Bank, which would dramatically increase the cost, processing time, and resources needed to review transactions and help American small businesses. The bill would also put American small businesses at a disadvantage to foreign competitors when exporting their goods abroad.

Given my own work with the Exlm Bank before holding elected office, I know how reliant small businesses engaging in international trade in Oregon and across the country are on the services provided. I cannot support legislation that undermines the Exlm Bank's ability to serve American businesses.

In addition, the bill seeks to prevent Iran from accessing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)--an international reserve asset that many developing countries around the world rely on--through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, Iran is already prevented from having access to SDRs thanks to current U.S. sanctions, meaning this bill is unnecessary.

In practice, the bill would actually prevent increases of SDRs to all countries. This is because the IMF process for approving SDR distributions is a simple up-or-down vote on whether there should be a distribution of SDRs to all IMF member countries--there is no avenue at the IMF for SDR votes on individual member countries. As a result, this bill would likely cause significant hardship for many developing IMF member countries around the world.

The U.S. Treasury Department is also opposed to these provisions, stating that this bill would deny the IMF and U.S. Treasury ``a tool for promptly responding to global economic crises and preventing spillovers to the U.S. economy.''

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