Source: Blog – Alliance for American Manufacturing

Sean Duffy, President-elect Trump’s pick to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, attends a House of Representatives committee hearing in 2016. Duffy spent nearly a decade in the House as a Republican representative from Wisconsin. | Getty Images

The first in a series examining the manufacturing issues in front of the president-elect’s cabinet nominees.

President-elect Trump doesn’t take office until January 20, but Congress is already preparing to conduct confirmation hearings for his cabinet nominees. We’ll be taking a look at some of them, too. On January 15, the Senate Commerce Committee will reportedly hold a confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Transportation (DOT): Former Wisconsin congressman Sean Duffy.

If confirmed, Duffy will lead a department that manages a huge amount of federal spending, including the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA). That law authorizes highway and transit programs through the end of September 2026, meaning that the incoming administration and Congress will need to pass a new surface transportation reauthorization bill in the 119th Congress.

During Duffy’s confirmation hearing, he’ll undoubtedly be asked about funding solutions to ensure that America addresses long-term infrastructure neglect that limit competitiveness for U.S. companies and their workers. But here are three under-the-radar issues that Duffy may hear about from Senators, ones that have a significant impact on American manufacturing and its workers:

Buy America

Included in the 2021 IIJA’s was the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA), which greatly enhances the domestic content preferences applied to infrastructure projects backed by federal spending. Buy America rules are a commonsense way to support domestic manufacturers and America’s workers, encouraging investment in industries up and down the infrastructure supply chain. But DOT and other departments have been slow to implement Buy America and have issued too many “general waivers” that effectively undermine the policy, bypassing U.S. companies and their workers in favor of imports.

Putting our Buy America rules into full effect should be a priority of any DOT secretary, who is responsible for a lot of infrastructure spending. Buy America should also be top of mind of a DOT secretary serving in the cabinet of Donald Trump, who has often repeated his “two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American.”

Buy Clean

The government wants to utilize cleaner American steel for federally financed procurement, but some agencies may be botching the implementation in a way that will put good jobs at risk.

Consider what’s gone on at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Section 60506 of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act created a FHWA pilot program to increase the use of products and materials with lower embodied carbon. For products like steel, the intent was clear: leverage the power of federal infrastructure spending to incentivize companies and their workers to continue ongoing decarbonization efforts. This is in DOT’s portfolio, but the program rollout ran afoul when the FHWA recently issued a single standard that failed to recognize the two fundamentally different ways that steel is made.

Both integrated and electric arc furnace steelmakers are necessary to meet U.S. economic and national security needs, and both have a role in producing cleaner steel. But it’s a losing proposition for those needs, as well as for decarbonization, for “Buy Clean” policies to be implemented with a single standard that pits two fundamentally different production processes against one another.

Any future “Buy Clean” policies should follow the lead of the Environmental Protection Agency, which nailed it in its 2025 guidance that made clear there is a “need to create procurement pathways to decarbonize all parts of the steel industry, including integrated and electric arc mills.”

TIVSA

The Transportation Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act (TIVSA) was enacted in 2019 because U.S. tax dollars in the form of federal financial assistance for public transportation infrastructure projects were flowing to Chinese firms with reported connections to China’s Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and firms like Huawei. But this law designed to limit the penetration of China’s state-owned, -backed, and -controlled companies into our critical infrastructure is at risk of being evaded through clever loopholes.

The Federal Transit Administration and Federal Aviation Administration at DOT both play a central role in administering this funding restriction, and key members of Congress are already demanding action to ensure that “spin-off” operations are not used as a ploy to evade the law.

How will this hearing go?

A former Wisconsin district attorney, Duffy spent nearly a decade in Congress in the 2010s. Since leaving Washington, he’s been a host on the Fox Business Network. And since the president-elect announced his nomination shortly after the November election, he’s been back on Capitol Hill, meeting with the Commerce Committee’s members. Duffy appears to have gained bipartisan support, notably from Sen. Tammy Baldwin – a Democrat from his home state and a Buy America champion.

“I’ve worked with Sean before to deliver for Wisconsin, and I plan to support his nomination because I am confident that we can work together to keep Wisconsin families safe and our economy moving forward,” Baldwin told reporters in December.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Duffy’s hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. Stay tuned for more on the issues facing President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees.

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