Report from the Alliance for American Manufacturing

Report from the Alliance for American Manufacturing

During his campaign, the President promised the American people he would implement tax reform, mitigate our unfair trade policies and begin a long-overdue process of repairing United States infrastructure needs.

A new tax policy has been enacted, and the President has taken major steps to change the landscape of unfair free trade by declaring tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum. This is an ongoing process and it may be many months before we see a definitive result on trade rules.

But, the administration’s infrastructure plan has been left somewhere in a large pothole and will not be addressed until 2019. The President will have been in office for more than two years before even getting to first base on an infrastructure program.

Americans will get a more aggressive look at our failing infrastructure this summer during vacation travels by auto, train and airplane. And these are just the transportation components of our infrastructure.

The one main issue that both Republicans and Democrats agree upon is the dire need to invest in America’s crumbling infrastructure.

Making a major investment in infrastructure would provide a substantial boost to our economy and create jobs especially if Buy America preferences are applied, which the President also pledged he would implement.

A 2014 report by Duke University researchers estimated that a long-term transportation bill worth $114 billion annually would create 2.5 million new jobs.  Since moving into the White House, the President  could have already created more than 900,000 jobs and produced a much healthier economy, if he would have seriously addressed an infrastructure program during his first few months in office.

The next time the President travels to one of his many luxurious golf courses, he should travel by car, train or commercial airline. He would then get a first-hand look at why he needs to quickly try to make America’s infrastructure something he can be as proud of as he is of his many, well-manicured and heavily-funded country clubs.

Jeff Bonior, Staff Writer for the Alliance for American Manufacturing