re: Buy American, Hire American (Video of President Trump's Speech)

I work in the pipeline industry. I helped write a white paper on the effects the buy-American EO would have on our industry.

In a nutshell, projects would get pushed out a year or more and price of material (namely the pipe) would rise 3-fold. Most of the hot rolled coils used to make pipe comes from foreign suppliers (even if the pipe is rolled in the US, the material was not sourced domestically).

We estimated 70% of the dollars spent on a pipeline already goes directly into the pockets of Americans. The US industry just can't compete on price and quality at this point in the game. We'd love to be able to buy 100% domestic but it would make us uncompetitive and ultimately raise prices on the end consumer - if the projects were economically feasible at all.