The U.S. Department of Transportation must prioritize American-made products and materials in the policies that guide its funding.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is asking the public to comment on the policies that guide its surface transportation programs – which aid the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, rail, transit and more across the country – ahead of the big Congressional effort to reauthorize those programs when they expire next year.
So the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has weighed in: We’ve got strong federal Buy America laws on the books for our infrastructure spending. DOT should continue to enforce them, more fully implement them, and reject proposals that weaken them. Strong enforcement supports domestic industry, strengthens supply chain security, creates good jobs, and bolsters the nation’s economy.
What we’re talking about here, of course, is the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act, which Congress passed and was signed into law in 2021. Prior to BABA, federal Buy America laws were limited in their coverage and eroded by waivers and loopholes. Billions of taxpayer dollars meant for federally assisted infrastructure projects were spent annually on foreign-made products and materials. With its enactment, BABA applies Buy America rules to all federal departments and agencies and extends coverage to all products and materials used to complete federally assisted infrastructure projects, effectively building upon and strengthening Buy America laws that have been used for decades on highway, transit, rail and airport projects.
We don’t need a brand new Buy America law with next year’s reauthorization. We need to make sure BABA is enforced and utilized. In our comments, AAM listed out the ways in which DOT could improve its implementation of our Buy America rules. Here are some of them:
Fewer general waivers.
It should not be a surprise that after decades of deindustrialization, targeted Buy America waivers are needed to overcome short-term market limitations as companies work to expand their U.S. supply chains. However, DOT and its operating administrations (OAs) should make a concerted effort to shift away from using general waivers of Buy America that for decades have operated to exclude entire programs and categories of spending from a clear congressional directive. Instead, OAs should rely on the ad hoc, product-specific waivers authorized and intended by Congress to overcome short-term market limitations such as product non-availability or unreasonable cost. These waivers, when issued in a narrow, transparent manner and on a project-specific basis, identify supply chain gaps and create powerful market signals that induce companies to confidently make U.S. factory investments. Waivers that are applied too broadly, such as public interest waivers of general applicability, bypass domestic companies and America’s workers and diminish market signals for U.S. investments.
Commit to an important timeline.
Congress has twice directed the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to apply Buy America to manufactured products – both in the 1982 STAA and the 2021 IIJA. Yet, FHWA continues to maintain a nationwide, general waiver of “manufactured products” that was issued in 1983 and is responsible for staggering sums of tax dollars purchasing foreign products rather than those produced by U.S. companies and their workers. An FHWA final rule issued on January 14, 2025, establishes a timeline to phase in Buy America for this category of products in two phases: first, in October 2025 products must meet the manufacturing / assembly requirement; and second, in October 2026 products must meet the statutory component content threshold. DOT should ensure that FHWA adheres to this timeline.
Waiver process efficiencies.
As FHWA prepares to apply Buy America to the manufactured products category, it should be prepared to review and, if necessary, approve requests for targeted waivers. Where there is a demonstrated need, FHWA should seek public comment on proposed waivers as required by statute at the earliest opportunity. However, DOT should carefully scrutinize any proposals that would impose rigid statutory timelines on the waiver approval process. While AAM supports an efficient system for waivers, we are deeply concerned that imposing strict timelines could result in the issuance of inappropriate waivers of certain items that are produced in the United States by America’s workers; or it may lead to the issuance of unnecessary general waivers which Congress has discouraged. When issued narrowly, Buy America waivers serve as a powerful tool for the identification of supply chain gaps and to create strong market signals for companies to make investments and hire workers. In fact, the issuance of ad hoc, project-specific waivers where there is a justification is an indication that our Buy America laws are being effectively administered.
Our comments to DOT weren’t exclusively about existing Buy America rules, however. AAM also outline our support for some new legislation: The STOP China Act, which builds on a 2019 law called the Transportation Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act (TIVSA), which was enacted to staunch the flow of federal tax dollars to Chinese firms with reported connections to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military.
TIVSA restricts certain federal assistance administered by the Federal Transit Administration from being used to purchase rolling stock (like rail cars and buses) from Chinese state-owned, -backed and controlled companies. The STOP China Act tightens TIVSA up so that companies covered by its restrictions can’t wriggle out of them by spinning off their operations.
You can read more about the STOP China Act here. And read AAM’s full comments to DOT about the surface transportation reauthorization here.