Trump’s shovel a blunt instrument
US President Donald Trump reassured manufacturers gathered in the White House Roosevelt room on March 31 that a massive infrastructure programme was coming soon.
“We’re going to make it happen” this year, he said, according to Drew Greenblatt, the president of Marlin Steel in Baltimore, who was present.
“That was actually the fi rst thing that he talked about behind closed doors with us,” Greenblatt added.
But putting a trillion-dollar infrastructure programme to work could be easier said than done, as some of the projects suggested to the administration underscore.
Project lists submitted by the North Americas Building Trades Unions (Nabtu) and by an outside developer who helped with the transition, both contain projects that infrastructure builders call “shovel ready”.
But, for a range of reasons, shovel ready does not always mean ready for shovels to break ground. That means any effort to jump-start projects, put people to work and inject economic stimulus could drag on Trump’s promise for a 10-year, $1 trillion infrastructure project.
After Nabtu president Sean McGarvey met Trump on January 23, the group submitted a total of 26 bridge, pipeline and water projects.
A second list of 51 projects was assembled by Ohio developer Dan Slane, who assisted with the transition, including everything from inland waterways to ports to a new FBI headquarters.
While details on Trump’s plans are scant, a senior administration official said they were looking for ways to shorten the lengthy permitting process.
“The current system has just lost its way,” he said.
Nine projects have garnered the support of both Slane and the Nabtu, appearing on both lists; of those, seven have yet to start construction, and one has only done preliminary construction, highlighting how hard it is to launch infrastructure projects as quickly as Trump wants to do.