Last November President Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a $1.2 trillion bill that the White House claims will produce benefits ranging from clean drinking water to enhanced broadband. What’s quickly becoming apparent, however, is that the IIJA’s ability to deliver such improvements is being undermined by protectionist measures included in the legislation.

Buried within the IIJA—on page 866 of the 1,039-page bill—is the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA) which, as the name implies, imposes protectionist “Buy America” mandates requiring the use of U.S.-made products and materials. While such requirements have long been a costly feature of federal infrastructure spending, the BABA significantly increases their bite. Traditionally limited to transportation and water-related projects, the BABA expands the spectrum of public works subject to such protectionism to include projects such as dams, buildings, and electrical transmission facilities.

And it’s not just the scope of projects that has been expanded, but the types of construction materials as well. Limited in the past to iron and steel, the IIJA’s Buy America requirements now include nonferrous metals (e.g., copper), plastic- and polymer-based products, glass (including optic glass), composite building materials, lumber, and drywall. The legislation also requires manufactured goods purchased with IIJA funding to be produced in the United States and have at least 55 percent U.S. content.

As a variety of industries are pointing out, however, such requirements introduce considerable obstacles to the improvement of domestic infrastructure. Which is supposed to be why the IIJA was passed.

In a January 31 letter to Biden Administration officials, for example, several telecom groups noted that the 55 percent U.S. content requirement does not comport with industry realities where complex global supply chains are common. “While a few individual network elements might meet the 55 percent domestic content threshold they are extremely limited in number, and it appears that no combination of network products would meet the IIJA’s content requirements from end-to-end,” the letter stated.

Such domestic content requirements may mean a big payday for individual firms like Corning, but the overall effect will be delays and increased costs. That’s true not only for efforts to improve broadband networks but all manner of public works projects that rely on communications technologies to boost automation and efficiencies.

But the cost of Buy America requirements isn’t just about higher expenses and extended timelines, but quality as well. As firms in the water sector have pointed out in their own letters to members of the administration, such requirements call into question the industry’s ability to secure the best available technologies for the systems they use. That has implications not only for public health and the provision of clean drinking water, the industry argues, but the environment given the need for technologies that ensure maximum efficiency and the reduction of carbon emissions.

It’s also an additional headache at a time when securing needed components and systems is already a struggle amidst strained supply chains.

Beyond the telecom and water sectors, meanwhile, state transportation officials are cautioning that Buy America requirements could hamper efforts to deploy 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations. A letter to the Department of Transportation from five states cited “concern that states will not be able to locate sufficient, if any, [electric vehicle] charging equipment that complies with Buy America requirements” while New Jersey state officials warned that if Buy America requirements are extended to Make-Ready components (parts such as wiring used in charging stations) that it would “create an incredibly complex challenge for both states and utilities to meet or even attempt to verify.”

To address these added costs and complications both industry and state officials have called for waivers from Buy America requirements. Such waivers can be secured if products and materials are not domestically available in sufficient quantities and/​or of satisfactory quality, if the use of domestic products/​materials raise a project’s overall cost by more than 25 percent, or if Buy America requirements can be shown to be inconsistent with the public interest.

Administration officials, however, don’t exactly appear to be champing at the bit to grant them.

Questioned about waivers for the telecom sector last week, the head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that “There has to be a high bar, and we have to be very smart and very tailored about any waivers that we give.”

Even if agency heads agree on the need for waivers, they may face a rocky path to securing them. Whereas previously the agencies that administered Buy America requirements were responsible for considering waiver requests, in January 2021 the Biden administration required that waivers pass muster with the Office of Management and Budget’s Made in America Office (MIAO). With the MIAO tasked with “increase[ing] reliance on domestic supply chains and reduc[ing] the need for waivers”, requests for relief from Buy America requirements might not face the most receptive audience.

And as the telecom industry points out in another letter, just the process alone of reviewing each and every waiver request to purchase a piece of equipment could produce significant delays.

Is this how America builds back better?

If it accomplishes nothing else, the IIJA offers a cautionary tale about the counterproductive nature of Buy America rules. Such restrictions introduce complications, delays, added costs, and are at odds with carefully built globalized supply chains designed to ensure maximum efficiency. They limit the government’s ability to secure the highest quality product at the best price. More fundamentally, they undermine the IIJA’s primary purpose of rebuilding infrastructure.

The Biden administration has made the improvement of U.S. infrastructure a centerpiece of its domestic agenda. Buy America requirements are an obstacle to the achievement of that goal. Let’s hope that waivers are generously and quickly issued to help mitigate the impact of this ill-advised and counterproductive policy.