Trump’s bold claims aren’t always fulfi lled

WASHINGTON — It’s been one of President Donald Trump’s favorite boasts since he took office: By his order, new oil and gas pipelines built in the U.S. will be made from American steel.

As is often the case, Trump has wrapped the claim into an anecdote he often repeats. Referring to his orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, Trump recalled last month that he interrupted the signing to ask, “Who makes those beautiful pipes for the pipeline?”

“Sir, they’re made outside of this country,” came the response.

“I said, ‘No more, no more.’ So we added a little clause — didn’t take much — that (if) you want to build pipelines in this country, you’re going to buy your steel, and you’re going to have it fabricated, here. Makes sense, right?”

The story has proven effective with Trump’s audiences, but it’s not an accurate description of what he did. It took the White House only a couple of weeks after the signing to acknowledge that the “Buy America” rule would

not apply to Keystone. That would be unfair, officials said, because TransCanada, the company building the line, had long ago bought its pipe, some of it made in the U.S. and the rest in Canada, Italy and India.

Even so, White House officials have insisted that all future pipelines will be covered.

That’s not true either, according to government documents and interviews with officials in the affected industries.

The actual number of pipelines covered by Trump’s Buy America rule could well be zero.

Therein lies a tale about the gap between the president’s sometimes extravagant promises and the reality of his governing. White House officials, when asked about the discrepancy, sought to explain it away by redefining Trump’s words — a practice they’ve often followed over the last three months.

Trump revels in executive orders. With his legislative program either stymied — as in the case of health care — or far behind schedule, Trump has used orders he can sign in front of TV cameras to provide images of decisive action.

But a review by the Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau of the

39 orders and presidential memorandums signed by Trump found that fewer than half actually made a substantive change in federal policy. Sixteen of the directives simply told Cabinet agencies to study a problem and come up with recommendations — something that in many cases the agencies had the authority to do even without a formal order.

Of the executive orders that actually did change policy, two — the original and revised versions of Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. by residents of several majority-Muslim countries — have been blocked by courts. Another was a hiring freeze by federal departments, which the White House rescinded last week after it was blamed for worsening backlogs at veterans hospitals and Social Security offices. And an order from January, reorganizing the National Security Council to add Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, was negated by another this month that took Bannon off the panel.

That leaves about a dozen orders that have truly succeeded in changing policy. Most involve rolling back Obama administration environmental policies or toughening immigration enforcement — two priorities on which the administration has focused sustained attention.

The directive that

supposedly requires using American steel in pipelines instead set a broad policy of favoring domestic steel and told the Commerce Department to take six months to come up with a plan to put a requirement into effect “to the extent permitted by law.”

That language largely negates what Trump claims: Current law almost certainly does not allow the government to impose a domestic-content rule on private companies.

The interpretation that Trump was just offering a suggestion clearly was not what the country’s business leaders heard.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, warned against an “unprecedented” effort to impose a Buy America requirement on private-sector projects. “A core feature of the U.S. free enterprise system … is that private businesses should be free to make purchasing decisions on their own,” the Chamber wrote.

In a lengthy submission to the Commerce Department, trade associations representing the natural gas industry suggested that it would be better for the administration to provide incentives to steel companies to produce more — an approach that some administration officials suggested may be what the Commerce Department ultimately will propose when it submits its plan, which is due in late July.