U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure chairman, recently sent a letter to Nuria Fernandez, Federal Transit Administration (FTA) administrator, urging the agency to enforce Buy America provisions within its jurisdiction.
“One of the greatest threats to a strong U.S. transportation manufacturing sector is the rise of predatory Chinese state-owned and -supported enterprises (SOEs), which rely on government-subsidized, below-market pricing to drive legitimate competitors out of business,” DeFazio said. “Through Section 7613 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 … Congress sought to address this concern by prohibiting the use of federal transit funds to purchase rolling stock from SOEs in most cases. Unfortunately, the law also provides four transit agencies with a permanent exemption to those protections.
DeFazio asked the FTA to do four things: enhance Buy America compliance reviews for procurements from SOEs; identify Buy America oversight standards and reporting requirements to improve transit agencies’ oversight when procuring rolling stock from SOEs; ensure that when transit agencies procure SOE-built rolling stock, the manufacturer and the transit agency comply with all aspects of transit Buy America requirements; and require robust and publicly-available reporting by exempt transit agencies of all mandatory and voluntary oversight steps they take when procuring rolling stock from SOEs.