WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden administration is taking a key step in ensuring that the federal dollar supports US production – by setting requirements for how $ 1 trillion-funded projects funded by the $ 1 trillion infrastructure package receive their building materials.
The guide, released Monday, requires the purchased material – whether for a bridge, highway, plumbing or broadband – to be made in the United States, according to administration officials. However, the rules also establish a process for repealing these requirements in case there are not enough local producers or material costs are too high in order to issue fewer failures over time with increasing production capacity in the United States.
“There will be additional opportunities for good jobs in the manufacturing sector,” said Celeste Drake, director of Made in America at the White House Office of Management and Budget.
President Joe Biden hopes to create more jobs, ease supply chain tensions and reduce dependence on China and other nations with interests that differ from those of the United States. With inflation at its 40-year high ahead of the 2022 by-elections, he bets that more local production will eventually reduce price pressures to blunt republican attacks that his $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package initially caused higher prices.
“From day one, every action I take to rebuild our economy has been guided by one principle: Made in America,” Biden said Thursday in Greensboro, North Carolina. “We need a federal government that is not just talking about buying American ones, but is actually taking action.
Biden said the $ 700 billion the government spends annually on supplies should give priority to U.S. suppliers, but regulations from the 1930s are either diluted or enforced in ways that mask the use of foreign import.
The administration could not say what percentage of building material for existing infrastructure projects was produced in the United States, although the federal government is already spending $ 350 billion on construction this year. The new guidelines will allow government officials to know how much money goes to workers and factories in the United States.
In the bipartisan infrastructure package, which became law last November, the requirement was that as of May 14, “none of the funds” allocated to federal project agencies could be spent unless all used iron, steel, industrial products and construction materials in the project are manufactured in the United States. ” That’s according to Monday’s 17-page guidelines.
The guide includes three standards for repealing these requirements: if the purchase “would be incompatible with the public interest”; if the necessary materials have not been produced “in sufficient and reasonably available quantities or of satisfactory quality”; or if American materials increase the cost of the project by more than 25%.
American manufacturers do not have about 170,000 jobs out of 12.8 million jobs in factories occupied in 2019, as manufacturing jobs began to decline before the pandemic began. But the United States has 6.9 million fewer manufacturing jobs than its 1979 peak, a loss caused by outsourcing and automation.
Getting more jobs in industry is likely to mean adding more factories and production lines – as manufacturers operate at a capacity of 78.7%, which the Federal Reserve notes is above the historical average.
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