45th American president's policies
The infrastructure policy of Donald Trump included promoting fossil fuel production and exports, safeguarding the cybersecurity of the national power grid and other critical infrastructure, locking China out of the U.S. fifth-generation Internet market, and rolling back regulations to ease the process of planning and construction. While there were no major infrastructure spending packages, some individual policies and projects were advanced piecemeal, especially in rural areas.
During his first run for the presidency, Trump touted a potential major infrastructure initiative. Although both sides of the political aisle recognized the need to upgrade American infrastructure, no major infrastructure bill was passed due to disagreements over the details of such a spending package, namely, what to spend on, how much to spend, and how to pay for it. In general, the aim of the Trump administration was to revitalize the national economy and enhance national security, despite the tendency of the Republican Party to oppose large federal expenditures and tax hikes. On the other hand, members of the Democratic Party typically favored investing in renewable energy and new infrastructure that could begin to combat climate change.
Views, vision, and standards.
As early as May 2015, one month before launching his presidential campaign, Donald Trump expressed his desire to fix America's aging infrastructure, and make it "second to none." He expressed concern about the state of American infrastructure on multiple occasions, drawing comparisons with other countries. For example, he stated that American passenger trains were slow compared to those in China, and American airports were dirty and dilapidated compared to their counterparts in China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. He acknowledged that modernizing American infrastructure was going to be expensive but argued that in the end, such an investment would pay for itself. In this regard, his position is in line with that of the Democratic Party. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden had themselves been advocating for more federal infrastructure spending. Ultimately, he was unable to sign into law a major infrastructure spending bill during his first term in office.
On January 31, 2019, Trump issued an executive order encouraging the purchase of U.S.-made construction materials for public infrastructure projects, especially those that need funding from the federal government. This followed his 2017 "Buy American, Hire American" executive order restricting the hiring of foreign workers and tightening standards for federal acquisitions. As of February 2019, Canadian officials were negotiating an exemption for their country.
In August 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration issued guidelines on what it considered to be "critical infrastructure workers." Such individuals include those in the communications, energy, transportation, and water management sectors.
Environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.
In April 2019, President Trump signed two executive orders intended to accelerate energy infrastructure projects. The first makes it harder for oil pipelines and other energy projects to be delayed due to environmental concerns. The second modernizes the approval process for projects crossing international borders. Speaking in front of union workers from the energy industry, the President stated that blocking energy projects "does not just hurt families and workers like you, it undermines our independence and national security."
In early January 2020, the Trump administration proposed revisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that would relax environmental regulations on infrastructure constructions in order to speed them up. Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when assessing major infrastructure projects and would have to complete their comprehensive environmental reviews in two years. Infrastructure projects that require federal permits but little federal funding are exempt from such reviews. Nor would new projects have to account for "cumulative" effects.
If the proposed revisions survived their legal challenges, environmental activists would no longer be able to halt pipeline construction by litigation, a key tool they have been using since the middle of the Obama administration. While there have been examples of bureaucracy being burdensome on building projects in the past, such a drastic change would likely invite even more lawsuits. After 60 days of public hearing, a final regulation can be expected, probably before the 2020 Presidential election. In July 2020, the President announced the changes at a UPS hub in Atlanta, Georgia. He chose this location specifically because the revisions will expedite the expansion of the Interstate 75, frequently used by truck drivers and often congested. Previously, the State of Georgia announced it would create two additional lanes just for commercial trucks, and in the Fall of 2019, before Trump announced his revisions, said it was shifting the date of completion to 2028.
In June 2020, the President signed an executive order providing federal agencies with the emergency power to fast-track infrastructure projects, including energy and highway construction, by overriding environmental regulations. The Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, and Defense were to accelerate projects on federal lands. The White House claimed this was to help the U.S. economy recover from the downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency invoked the pandemic to ease regulations of power and industrial plants.
Funding efforts.
2017-19.
More infrastructure spending was Trump's most popular promise in his presidential campaign, with approval from two thirds of Americans. In his first speech as President-elect, Trump vowed to "begin the urgent task of rebuilding" the United States of America.
Trump presented an infrastructure plan to Congress in February 2018, with $200 billion in federal funding and projected it would result in $1.5 trillion of investments from the private sector. Democrats opposed this plan because of its emphasis on state and local funding and private investments. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle also questioned where the money would come from. By September 2019, as signs of a possible recession appear over the horizon, Donald Trump could use, among other things, infrastructure spending to tackle the problem like his predecessors did, albeit at the cost of more public debt as tax hikes are generally unpopular. However, because interest rates are low, public debt is not as troublesome, especially if additional debt is used to finance investments that could boost growth, such as in infrastructure.
In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump again called for investments in infrastructure, but offered very few specifics. Moreover, his vision made little headway because despite bipartisan agreement that American infrastructure is in a state of poor repair and needs upgrading, members of Congress have not been able to reach a consensus on how to pay for it. The problem of aging infrastructure cannot be addressed by the individual states because the costs are too high, meaning the federal government has to be involved. The federal tax on fuels, a major source of revenue for infrastructure spending, remains the same as it was in 1993, at $0.183 (~$ in 2023) per gallon ($0.048 per liter). In addition, the Highway Trust Fund is losing its effectiveness thanks to improving energy efficiency and the arrival of alternative-fuel vehicles whose owners do not pay the gas tax. Although people who attended a meeting with Trump in February 2018 suggested that the President was open to the idea of raising the gas tax to $0.25 per gallon ($0.066 per liter), the White House downplayed possibilities of such a tax hike. According to the Chamber of Commerce, which backs the proposal, it would generate about $375 billion over ten years.
President Trump held a meeting with the top Democrats in Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, on April 30, 2019, but failed to strike a deal. He wanted Congress to first pass the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), the newly negotiated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to stop investigating him, and to remove the threat of impeachment. He also wanted a package with automatic re-authorization of highway and transit funding rather than a broader plan with money for a variety of items from hospitals to broadband Internet.
2020.
While Republicans have generally been skeptical of Democrats' proposals to finance massive infrastructure programs by debt, in late March 2020, as lawmakers ponder how to alleviate the severe economic downturn induced by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, they seem to have coalesced around the need to upgrade American infrastructure and create jobs. President Trump publicly endorsed this possible deal as the next phase of the federal response to the pandemic. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin told CNBC the President would like to take advantage of low interest rates to finance this potential bill. The Democrats' infrastructure plan includes funds for passenger rail transportation – with money for Amtrak's stations and services –, ports and harbors, climate-change resiliency, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and expanding access to broadband Internet. A different plan passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously in July 2019; it would allocate $287 billion over five years, $259 billion of which to maintain and repair roads and bridges. President Trump mentioned this second plan in his 2020 State of the Union Address.
Trump indicated he would like to go further than this Senate plan. In late March, he voiced his support for a potential "Phase 4" stimulus package worth two trillion dollars of infrastructure spending. He called it "Phase 4" because three previous stimulus bills aimed at mitigating the effects of the pandemic. Earlier in the year, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discussed a possible infrastructure plans with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal, but their talks were derailed as the pandemic continued to spread across the United States. In order for such a spending package to be passed, lawmakers from across the political spectrum would need to be able to overcome long-standing disputes over what to spend on, how much money to spend, and where the money comes from, because the term 'infrastructure' is quite broad and means different things specifically to different people. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy both expressed skepticism of the need for a fourth stimulus package in a row, saying they would like to wait and see the effects of the three packages already passed first.
Disaster relief.
In early June 2019, President Trump signed a disaster relief and recovery bill worth $19 billion (~$ in 2023). The Additional Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief Act of 2019 includes $3 billion (~$ in 2023) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to repair damages inflicted by natural disasters in the previous three years and to invest in resiliency and flood protection, unlocks $8.9 billion in disaster relief for Puerto Rico and offers an additional $900 million to help the territory recover from Hurricane Maria. This bill also provides additional resources to the U.S. Forest Service for wildfire suppression activities. Some $1.6 billion is allocated to repairing roads and bridges post-disaster through the Federal Highway Administration's Emergency Relief Fund.
The Act also provides financial assistance to the U.S. Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, which sustained $3 billion worth of damages by Hurricane Florence.
In early July 2020, President Trump approved federal aid going to Missouri after the state was battered by severe storms in early May. Preliminary estimates suggest repairing all the infrastructure damage could cost $9.3 million. Missouri Governor Mike Parson said federal money would fund the repairs and replacements of electrical power equipment, roads, bridges, and other public works.
Energy.
Electrical power grid.
In late June 2017, about a week after cybersecurity experts realized that a piece of malware used to attack Ukraine's power grid the previous year could, with modifications, be used against the United States, President Trump met with cabinet officials, leaders from the energy sector, cybersecurity experts to discuss the threat. The federal government identifies energy infrastructure, mostly owned and operated by the private sector, as critical, and the Department of Homeland Security cooperates with the private sector to ensure its security. Using an executive order issued in May 2017, President Trump ordered, among other things, an investigation on America's preparedness against a cyber attack resulting in prolonged power outages.
In late April 2020, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at protecting the U.S. national power grid against foreign cyber attacks. "A successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies," he wrote. This executive order bans the purchase and installation of equipment manufactured outside the