(2006-0947-F ) HIV/Aids

The materials in FOIA 2006-0947-F are a selective body of documents responsive to the topic of the FOIA. Researchers should consult the archivist about related materials. The Export-Import Bank of the United States celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2009. It was created in 1934 as the Export-Import Bank of Washington. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6581 on February 2 creating the bank. Its goal was to primarily support Roosevelt’s New Deal and to increase exports of American goods by offering working capital guarantees and credit insurance among other programs. In 1968, Congress changed the name to the Export-Import Bank of the United States though it is often more commonly called the Ex-Im Bank, or simply Ex-Im. The first loan given by the bank was a $3.8 million dollar loan to Cuba for the purchase of Silver ingots from a United States supplier. The bank operates as a semi-independent government agency. From 1993 to 2001 the bank opened Project Finance and Aircraft Finance divisions. It played an important role in financing exports to South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis. It established a Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee and enhanced its operations in that region. By 2000, the bank supported $15.5 billon in exports to seventy-two foreign countries. Of this amount, $326 million was for exports to Sub-Saharan African nations. The ever growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa was a key focus of the administration in its later years. In a letter written to Senator Dianne Feinstein on May 10, 2000, the President noted that approximately 34 million people were infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, that approximately 5,500 people were dying per day, and that almost 11.5 million people had died of the disease. These totals amounted to approximately eighty percent of the total world-wide deaths. This in a region that amounted to only 10 percent of the world’s population. On July 19, 2000 the bank announced that it would offer $1 billion in guaranteed loans to Sub-Saharan, African countries for the purchase of medicines and medical equipment to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS. This followed closely on the heels of a May announcement by a number of pharmaceutical companies that they would lower the cost of their HIV/AIDS drugs for use in those countries. It also followed closely President Clinton’s Executive Order 13155 which removed legal barriers preventing the manufacture and sale of HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals in many Sub-Saharan Africa nations. Certainly the program was not without its troubles. South Africa and Namibia refused to participate. A number of other African nations expressed reservations at a program that would increase their national debts and further burden their distressed economies. At least one country, Ghana, did partner with the Ex-Im Bank and accepted $250 million in loans for pharmaceuticals. Records opened in this collection relate to the 2000 G-8 summit in Okinawa and the Clinton administrations’ efforts to obtain funding for the African debt relief, specifically the Cologne Initiative and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt initiative. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, memoranda, talking points and public press releases regarding the announcement by the Ex-Im Bank of their loan program. Further, the collection includes email regarding HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Specifically, emails include correspondence to and from Sandra Thurman, former director of the Office of the National AIDS Policy.