America’s Great Corridors of Commerce Should be American-made

AAM urges the U.S. Department of Transportation to ensure its infrastructure initiative adheres to applicable Buy America laws.

In August the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a proposal: Why not allow state-level transportation agencies to lease out the right of way lands adjacent to existing highways and railroads to private sector companies so they can develop new infrastructure such as electric lines, fiber optic cable and water pipelines?

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is arguing that the initiative – America’s Great Corridors of Commerce (AGCC) – is a way to fast track a necessary upgrade for the national economy.

“To compete with China, America needs creative solutions not only to upgrade its traditional infrastructure, but to fast-track the new systems that will fuel industry for generations to come,” he wrote in a Washington Post opinion. “Using existing transportation rights-of-way instead of acquiring new private property reduces project costs and can leverage categorical environmental exemptions to bypass lengthy reviews.”

This is an idea once floated by the Biden administration in 2021: By sticking new infrastructure next to established infrastructure, a project could save lots of time and money. Studies will have already been done and land won’t need to be acquired for it.

It doesn’t track, however, that these projects should be allowed to forego all federal requirements associated with them.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing supports ongoing infrastructure modernization, as it’s a requirement for keeping domestic manufacturing competitive. We simultaneously support building out modern infrastructure with American-made materials. After all, certain infrastructure projects backed by federal funding are subject to existing Buy America laws that require a preference for those materials.

“To the extent federal financial assistance, federal credit programs, federal permits, federal approvals, federal technical assistance, or other federal support are associated with designated corridors, [DOT] should ensure full compliance with applicable domestic content requirements,” we wrote in comments to Secretary Duffy.

We’re sticklers about this because bipartisan consensus is too. Congress essentially linked infrastructure policy with manufacturing policy when it passed the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA) in 2021, a law that ensures the iron and steel, construction materials and manufactured products used in all federally assisted infrastructure projects are produced in the United States. Doing so allows taxpayers to receive the full economic benefits of infrastructure spending by requiring that it also stimulate the domestic industrial base: More production, more investment and, ultimately, more jobs.

Congress has already clarified that utility infrastructure associated with federally assisted transportation projects shouldn’t be counted differently for the purposes of domestic procurement compliance. And, what’s more, making sure Buy America sticks to the AGCC would be in line with President Donald Trump’s own executive orders. More from our letter:

President Trump’s Executive Order 13788, Buy American and Hire American, seeks to maximize goods, products, and materials produced in the United States through federal procurements and federal financial assistance awards. President Trump subsequently issued Executive Order 13858, Strengthening Buy American Preferences for Infrastructure Projects, specifically directing federal agencies to strengthen domestic preference policies applicable to infrastructure projects receiving federal financial assistance. Together, those executive orders reflect a clear and longstanding commitment to ensuring that federally supported infrastructure development maximizes the use of American-made materials and supports U.S. workers and manufacturers.  

We’ll be keeping an eye on the AGCC initiative as it moves forward. In the meantime, you can find our full comments to Secretary Duffy regarding the initiative here.