Early comments suggest infrastructure could be a key part of Trump’s plan

Without getting too deep into specifics, considering that Election Day was only two days ago, it stands to reason that with the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States, effective in January, interesting and different times are coming.

As things pertain to freight transportation, supply chain, and logistics, there are a plethora of things to keep a watchful eye one, including: global trade and trade agreements; foreign policy in the way of tariffs and collaboration with our trade partners; the regulatory impact in regards to potential rollbacks of existing regulations (especially those focused on motor carriers); climate change, and many others.

While it is far too early to gauge how things play out or which direction things go in, one underlying theme since the ballots were officially tallied late Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning has been the potential for a renewed push for a national infrastructure plan.

Again, it is too early, but it is encouraging at the very least, regardless of your political preferences, to at least hear about infrastructure as something that could be acted on closer to the near-term than the long-term.

Before looking at some of the comments made, it needs to be made clear that while the current infrastructure efforts coming out of Washington are far from perfect, they are not 100 percent flawed either. Why? Well, in recent years freight has gotten a bit of a more important seat at the table, rather than being an afterthought (How many times have we all heard “freight doesn’t vote” at an industry conference?  A lot, especially over the last decade or so).

And nearly a year ago, Congress and President Obama signed off on the $305 billion FAST Act – “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation”—which finally ended the 35 short-term, continuing resolution funding Band-Aids that Congress has passed since 2009.

To be sure, though, the bill is not perfect. Long-term funding at a time when it is sorely needed is not there, but it could be if there was the political will to increase the federal gasoline tax for the first time since 1993, but don’t count on it. And as well know, the current state of our infrastructure, as mentioned in a previous column, is old, unsafe, falling apart and hurting our competitiveness. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave the USA a “D” grade on infrastructure. The group says there will be a $1.44 trillion infrastructure funding gap over the next decade. Yes, it is an often-recited stat, but let’s face it, it is something that continually bears repeating all the same.

So back to the Election. On the campaign trail, Trump did not put together a specific proposal, but he described his vision as a “trillion-dollar rebuilding plan,” which would be “one of the biggest projects this country has ever undertaken, which he said would be funded through low interest rates and infrastructure bonds.

One of the things Trump made clear in his acceptance speech was that a national commitment to infrastructure cannot be ignored or overlooked.

“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” he said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”

That’s the talking part of a renewed commitment to rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, what comes next in the coming months and, likely, years, is the action part. We need to stay tuned on that.

One early and encouraging sign is that it has, for the moment anyhow, the potential to be a truly bipartisan effort, which in itself could go a long way towards progress.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted that last investing in infrastructure is an important priority of Trump’s, adding that Congress “can work together to quickly pass a robust infrastructure jobs bill.” 

A Bloomberg report noted that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), with whom Trump has solid relationship, has strongly supported the idea of infrastructure spending tied to a corporate tax overhaul.

It is hard to know if that concept truly has legs, but at the very least the wheels are turning for a potential national infrastructure plan. As we have seen basically forever in politics and policy, nobody ever really gets everything they want, so we need to wait for the official transition to take place and go from there. Whatever happens, let’s hope it’s in the name of progress.