AFP reporter Paul Handley described the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) as a "powerful US manufacturing group" in his reporting on AAM's new campaign to "lock Chinese suppliers out of large US infrastructure projects, saying Beijing does not reciprocate market access."

Handley quoted AAM Executive Director Scott Paul on the "need to make sure that our federal laws and our state laws give an appropriate preference to domestic firms for large scale infrastructure projects."

Paul said that because China had not signed on to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) of the World Trade Organization, the US was free to cut Chinese suppliers out of infrastructure projects.

"With respect to China we would be perfectly within out rights to completely close our markets to Chinese bids."

The campaign is not aimed at locking all foreign content out of US projects, Paul said.

"We do have reciprocity with a lot of countries, we have open procurement," he said.

"We certainly don't have it with China and some other countries which have not signed onto the GPA."

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