What an awful little thing, to once again play the NAFTA card to keep the profit margins in the cutthroat range.  With the ‘buy American’ stipulation, all you need is one bidder supporting a lie and greed and you have youR winning bidder.  We have heard it before and will again…........so I’m happy to remind of the ‘aircraft’ acceptability standards for imported components and military contracts. 

Hummm now where did I put those conterfeit nuts & bolts?

wild;)

As an avid ProPublica reader, I’m disappointed with this article.  First of all, it is patently one-sided and essentially amounts to a repackaging of a press release by an industry association.

The reason for these authors mistake I assume is a misunderstanding of who this interest group represents.  It doesn’t take a sleuth.  The Associated General Contractors (AGC), a construction industry group, represents exactly what they purport to represent, that is, general contractors.  General contractors are business owners with whom the government contracts to organize construction projects.  They hire and coordinate various sub-contractors to perform the various specialized tasks of a construction project, who in turn employ the individual workers.  So, to say that the Associated General Contractors represents over seven million workers is misleading.  I don’t doubt that they claim that, but a journalist should not parrot that claim.  That would be like saying that the owner of a store represents his workers when she takes a stand on an issue.  Do you say that Walmart executives and shareholders represent their workers when they lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act?  They employ them, but they do not represent their interests when they make public statements like that.

This is a particular point where this piece fails.  To provide one suggestion for how to bring balance to the story, the could have consulted with the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, an organization better known the “Building Trades Union” (http://www.buildingtrades.org/).  This group, which represents many but not all construction workers, would offer a different perspective.  To put it bluntly, they support “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus.  Why?  Because they have an interest in America’s having a strong industrial base because they build and refurbish the plants, giving them jobs.  Buy American provisions support American industry and create up to a third more jobs per stimulus dollar spent.

Probably worst of all is that this article fails to acknowledge that “Buy American” has been part of the federal government’s procurement policy for the last 70 years, not at all one particular to the stimulus projects.  Additionally, the stimulus law waives domestic sourcing requirements where their application would increase the overall project costs by more than 25%.  Under near identical rules in effect on federal contracts during 2007, only 0.01% of all federal contracting dollars were spent using such waivers, demonstrating the rarity of unavailability and serious cost differences between U.S. and imported goods and services.

The general contractors are pushing for something new that would cut their costs on federal projects, since “Buy American” is already the law of the land with federal contracts.  The “trade war” rhetoric is over the top, and the contractors don’t back it up.  The federal government, particularly when it comes to stimulus projects, has an interest in maximizing job creation and retention in the United States.  This can be debated on its merits, but it does not amount to a novel provocation to our trading partners.  In fact, such “Buy [insert country name here]” provisions are the norm in OECD stimulus legislation around the world right now, including in Canada.