President Obama today signed into law a bill reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) through September 2014. As Chamber President Tom Donohue said: “This is great news for thousands of American workers, businesses of all sizes, and taxpayers, who can cheer the fact that this bill will reduce the deficit by hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Ex-Im finances and guarantees billions of dollars in export sales that in turn sustain nearly 300,000 U.S. jobs at over 3,600 companies. With the reauthorization bill signed into law, the Bank’s lending authority will gradually rise from $100 billion to $140 billion over the next three years.

The Chamber conducted an aggressive advocacy campaign for Ex-Im’s reauthorization, and we applaud Congress for providing a strong bipartisan mandate for the Bank. American companies of all sizes are beneficiaries of the Bank. In fact, small businesses account for 87% of Ex-Im’s transactions. Tens of thousands of smaller companies that supply goods and services to large exporters also benefit from Ex-Im’s activities.

Among the Chamber members in the audience was small business owner Bobby Patton, President and CEO of Patton Electronics Co., a 100-employee company based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The firm today has sales in over 120 countries and generates about 70% of its revenue through exports — which, as Patton recently testified before Congress, would not be possible without Ex-Im.

In the spirit of World Trade Month, the Presdient reaffirmed the essential role exports play in creating jobs and growing our economy by highlighting the trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama that Congress approved last October: “I’m going to go anywhere I can in the world to create new markets for American goods. Today, with the trade agreements that we’ve signed into law, with the help of some of these same members of Congress, we’re making historic progress. Soon, there are going to be millions of new customers for our goods and services in Korea, in Colombia and Panama.”

We can’t rest on our laurels, but it’s progress.