A March 12 article (“‘Buy America’ rule killing Maine affordable housing, developers say“) vilified federal Buy America rules for slowing down housing construction projects here in Maine. The solution should not be to do away with Buy America. It should be to use the law as intended, including its waivers. 

The Build America Buy America Act (BABAA) extended domestic preferences, which already exist for some U.S. Department of Transportation infrastructure spending, to all federally supported infrastructure spending. But that doesn’t mean it’s rigid. The article only alludes to this, but the law spells out waiver processes. The focus needs to be on fixing the waiver processes, not scrapping an entire law that supports the U.S. manufacturing sector. 

Remember, we aren’t hearing complaints throughout the government about Buy America. We’re hearing them about federal housing projects. That’s because, compared with other federal agencies (DOT, EPA, Department of Commerce, etc.), it sounds like the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is doing a poor job of putting BABAA into practice. It’s uncertainty about HUD processing Buy America waivers that’s the problem. 

If developers truly can’t source HVAC supplies that meet Made in America criteria, HUD should consider time-limited, general waivers for those specific materials, and it should not take months to do it. The fault doesn’t lie with Buy America but with its implementation. 

James McBrady 
President, Structural Fabricators of New England
Cumberland