The Biden administration is directing federal agencies to prioritize purchasing American-made iron and steel for infrastructure projects.
The law specifies that federal agencies should “maximize the use of goods, products, and materials produced in, and services offered in, the United States.” It also says that funding from the bill will not be made available for a project unless “all of the iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in the project are produced in the United States.”
“This means all manufacturing processes, from the initial melting stage through the application of coatings, occurred in the United States,” adds the 17-page guidance released Monday.
While the new guidance outlines the application of the buy America preference from the infrastructure law, it also puts in place a process to waive the preference when there is not enough American-made supply or the cost of American iron and steel is too much.
Biden has repeatedly said that boosting American manufacturing and domestic supply chains is a priority of his administration.
“From day one, every action I’ve taken to rebuild our economy has been guided by one principle: made in America,” the president said on Thursday in Greensboro, North Carolina. “It takes a federal government that doesn’t just give lip service to buying American but actually takes action.”
The administration could not say what percentage of construction material for existing infrastructure projects is U.S.-made, even though the federal government is already spending $350 billion on construction this year, according to the Associated Press.
At the G-20 summit last October, Biden announced that the United States had reached a deal to reverse tariffs on European steel and aluminum imposed by his predecessor, President Donald Trump.
Trump’s tariffs on steel received praise from at least one president of a steelworkers union who in 2019 called them a “shot in the arm” for the American steel industry.
American manufacturers are about 170,000 jobs short of the 12.8 million factory jobs held in 2019, as manufacturing jobs began to decline with the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus in 2020. The United States has 6.9 million fewer manufacturing jobs compared with its 1979 peak, a loss largely attributed to outsourcing and automation.
