Do you know who said this?
“I also think that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it should be built with American steel from our American producers.”
Was it Donald Trump, madman-in-chief? No. It was Democratic Sen. Al Franken, in 2015. He proposed that in an amendment to a bill proposed by Republicans to allow Congress to circumvent permitting process for the pipeline.
So the Republicans said, right on! Right? Wrong. The Guardian explains:
Republicans unanimously blocked the amendment from consideration. Trump’s own commerce secretary nominee, Wilbur Ross, bought down-and-out American steel companies Bethlehem Steel, LTV and Acme Steel in the early 2000s and revived them under the name International Steel. In 2005, Ross sold those companies to Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, one of the pipeline’s major suppliers.
Trump, however, told Republicans today that “From now on we’re going to start making pipeline in the United States. If we build it in the United States, build the pipelines, we want to build the pipe. It’s going to put a lot of workers, a lot of steelworkers back to work. OK. We will build our own pipeline, we will build our own pipes. That’s what it has to do with. Like we used to in the old days.”
Wait a minute. Lots of the pipe has already been fabricated, and if you live in Little Rock, you can see it, out at the Welspun plant. In fact, in 2012, TransCanada announced that 75 percent of the pipe would be made in North America: half of it in Little Rock, at Welspun, and another 24 percent in Saskatchewan. India’s Welspun would supply 10 percent; Italy’s ILVA 16 percent.
Canadian pipe, like Welspun’s here, for the Keystone XL was manufactured several years ago and has been waiting for installation. Maybe there’s more pipe to be made. Maybe it will be made in the U.S.A. “like the old days.”