James C. Cruse

Senior Vice President, Policy and Planning
Export-Import Bank of the United States

James C. Cruse, senior vice president of Ex-Im Bank's Policy and Planning Group, has spent the bulk of his 33-year career at Ex-Im Bank helping the boards of directors evolve the Bank's strategic mission of supporting U.S. exports and jobs, and design the programs, policies and international negotiating approaches to fulfill that mission. The Policy and Planning Group addresses these responsibilities through its two divisions - Policy Analysis and Planning and International Relations.

Cruse joined Ex-Im Bank in 1970 as a country economist and moved to the policy side when then-Chairman William Casey created the policy unit in 1975. He was named to his current post in last year's Bank-wide reorgani-zation. Since joining Ex-Im Bank Cruse has had a variety of assignments and contributed to many of the policy and program developments which lie at the core of today's Ex-Im Bank. These include:

• the mid-70's inter-agency crafting of a logical role for export credit agencies after the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system;

• the mid-80's development of a revamped program structure in response to the Latin American debt crisis and the retreat of commercial banks from export finance;

• the early 90's creation of a securitized guarantee; and

• over 25 years of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) negotiations which have reduced the average subsidy of Ex-Im Bank activity from nearly 10 cents per dollar of activity to 1-2 cents.