KETCHIKAN — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said that President Donald Trump’s “Buy America” plan needs flexibility when it comes to government-funded projects like the move to replace an aging Alaska ferry serving Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands.<\/p>\n
Murkowski, a Republican, spoke to reporters Monday and was responding to a recent report by the Juneau Empire that plans for a new oceangoing ferry may be being put at risk by federal policies.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump signed the executive order that included a provision requiring all steel and iron products be produced in the U.S. at every stage of the process — even if there is nowhere in the U.S. to produce those products.<\/p>\n
Murkowski said she supports the provision but thinks there needs to be flexibility.<\/p>\n
“We want to make sure that we’re doing all that we can to support American manufacturing, American jobs — that’s good, that’s strong, that’s ideal,” Murkowski said. “But let’s not get ourselves down a rabbit path where we cannot have good manufacturing jobs in a place like Ketchikan, Alaska because we have gone through the log book and found out this piece of a widget was made in another country.”<\/p>\n
She went on to use Trump Tower in New York as a metaphor for how rigid enforcement of Buy America is unrealistic for plans to replace the ferry and other projects.<\/p>\n
The new ferry is intended to replace the Tustumena ferry. It was built in 1964 and for the second time in a decade has been put out of service for an entire summer after drydock workers discovered extensive amounts of steel requiring replacement.<\/p>\n
“This is not just the Tustumena project where this is become an issue,” Murkowski said. “This has ramifications and implications across the country.”<\/p>\n
She added: “The president knows you can build a nice Trump Tower and make sure you’ve got ‘Made in America’ on it. But that maybe some of the pieces of the towel came from somewhere else.”<\/p>\n
It appears that the only way to sidestep the Buy America provision is a waiver from the head of the Federal Highway Administration, but Trump has not yet hired one, the Ketchikan Daily News reports (http:\/\/bit.ly\/2wPmucF ).<\/p>\n
Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities spokesperson Aurah Landau told the Daily News on Monday that the waivers also “require extensive justification and vetting and could take a while.”<\/p>\n
Murkowski told the Daily News she would discuss the replacement of the Tustumena with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao on Aug. 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KETCHIKAN — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has said that President Donald Trump’s “Buy America” plan needs flexibility when it comes to government-funded projects like the move to replace an aging Alaska ferry serving Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands. Murkowski, a Republican, spoke to reporters Monday and was responding to a recent report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}