Construction workers looking for information on industry-related policy priorities for the Republican Party — should GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump be elected — got some details from his acceptance speech on 18 of July in Milwaukee and the party’s newly released campaign platform.
Some of these actions and comments from the Trump administration 2016-2020.
In his speech, Trump promised to embrace fossil fuels, including coal, in a new term. He also said he would end subsidies for electric vehicles and any support for what he called “green scam” projects, particularly in offshore wind power.
Instead, he called for reducing the national debt by making the United States not only energy independent by expanding oil and gas production, but also “energy dominant” in supplying fuels to other countries.
According to Trump, increased oil and gas extraction would lower costs for consumers and boost the economy. Those earnings, he said, would fund the construction of more roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
The Biden administration has spent “trillions of dollars on things that have to do with the new green scam,” Trump claimed, adding that “the trillions of dollars haven’t been spent yet.” He said his administration will “redirect that money to important projects like roads, bridges and dams and … not allow it to be spent on the nonsensical ideas of the New Green Scam.”
Trump criticizes, but the detail is thin
Trump called the Biden administration’s climate change policies ineffective, but did not mention Biden’s enactment of major federal project funding laws that included three of the largest infrastructure and construction measures in US history: the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the $280 billion Act. CHIPS and Science Act and the $800 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump also failed to point out that no major infrastructure legislation was enacted during his own tenure.
Another major theme of the speech and platform was closing the US southwest border. Trump praised former President Dwight Eisenhower’s mass deportation program in the 1950s, then labeled by his administration as “Operation Wetback.” He used military-style efforts to deport over a million Mexicans from the US
In Trump’s platform discussion of border security, a key element was finishing the southwest border wall. “Hundreds of miles have already been built and they’re working great,” he said. “Construction of the remaining wall can be completed quickly, efficiently and economically.”
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there were about 654 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers on the Southwest border, stretching for about 1,950 miles in total as of February 2024.
The official Republican party platform for 2024 contains only three references to “infrastructure”.
In one, he says that “the Republican Party must return to its roots as the party of industry, industry, infrastructure and workers,” but there are no further details on what an infrastructure policy would entail.
The other two mentions apparently refer to cybersecurity, not construction, with one stating that “Republicans will use all tools of national power to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure and industrial base from malicious cyber actors.” .
The platform also called for a return to Trump’s push during his presidency to undo federal regulations.
Related to government contracting, “Republicans will strengthen Buy American and Hire American policies, prohibiting companies that outsource work from doing business with the federal government,” the platform says, again without details on that panel.
In a rare example of a detailed recommendation, the platform promises that “Republicans will promote beauty in public architecture and preserve our natural treasures.”
This is an apparent reference to a controversial 2020 Trump executive order stating that classical architecture “shall be the preferred and default architecture for federal public buildings absent exceptional factors requiring another type of architecture.”
Trump’s 2020 directive drew strong criticism from the American Institute of Architects and was revoked by President Biden in a February 2021 executive order.
