Let’s rebuild the Key Bridge, the ‘American way’

President Biden’s “Buy American” executive order ranks among the first and best components of his economic agenda. Now facing the imperative to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore — a massive undertaking to which he has committed his administration, including an upcoming site visit — “Infrastructure Joe” needs to leverage all the powers of the presidency to revive the “American way.” This is the only strategy that can deliver the project quickly and effectively.

The American way encompasses the can-do attitude that animated the building of the nation, from the Cumberland Road to the Apollo moon shot. Consequently, rebuilding this 1.6-mile span will require spurning the creeping foreign dependencies to which the national economy has fallen prey since the end of the Cold War. It will also require aligning the mega-project with the president’s “Buy American” and “Hire American” principles — particularly American union labor, along with American architects, engineers, and the like.

Biden would do well to follow President Abraham Lincoln’s policy of using domestic products when laying the transcontinental railroad. This jumpstarted the U.S. iron and steel industry, eschewing cheaper British imports. This approach means valuing the project’s total benefits to the country and avoiding a narrow cost-savings focus on the modern-day equivalents of British rails: Chinese steel, Mexican cement, Japanese electronics and “smart” features, Indian engineering, and foreign labor, all of which greatly disadvantage U.S. companies and American workers.

Biden must also channel federal resources to Baltimore City and County, along with neighboring jurisdictions, to buttress the local economy, in light of the jobs directly and indirectly lost due to the collapsed bridge. Among the priorities: worker-training programs, carried out by American firms or unions, to start immediately, with preferences given to unemployed American citizens in Baltimore. If we expand the local labor pool with trained and skilled Americans, contractors could easily attract workers when the actual bridge construction begins.

But that’s not all. The American way also demands streamlining the contracting and permitting process. The replacement project must unfold with efficiency and speed, through a joint, one-stop clearinghouse established now to facilitate inter-agency communication and decision-making. 

Streamlining is critical, given the slow start of the administration’s onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing through the CHIPS Act, moving sluggishly even before the filing of environmental impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. An oft-cited White House study found that the NEPA process require an average of 4.5 years to complete. That’s time that Baltimore and the nation do not have. Without robust reforms to the 1970 legislation — including for now a specific exemption from NEPA for the bridge and CHIPS projects — the rest of our infrastructure and industry will continue to lag behind the rest of the world.

To further compress the timeline, the Department of Transportation must assign contracts to the most qualified firms for design, engineering, and construction as soon as feasible. No red tape. No drawn-out, deleyed request-for-proposal periods. No extended bidding processes. The names of leading firms in the respective fields can be drawn out of a hat; the contracts can be strictly audited, cost-plus.

These specifics would accelerate the raising of the collapsed artery of the Baltimore Beltway, whose notorious overcapacity will spill over into the two harbor tunnels. Addressing that related problem, the replacement design must envision a state-of-art crossing for the rest of the 21st century, including doubling of the lane count on the bridge and its approaches to align with the design of Interstate 695 around the city. 

Moreover, the container ship disaster revealed our vulnerability to asymmetrical warfare designed to sabotage U.S. infrastructure, and thus our economy. A top-level assessment of all potential infrastructure chokepoints nationwide warrants a presidential commission, followed by quick congressional funding to correct vulnerabilities, including appropriate security. The next bridge tragedy may not be caused by a massive container ship, but by a copycat attack by a few well-trained operatives using a motorboat.

Biden, a long-time traveler through Baltimore, knows that the Key Bridge’s namesake drafted our national anthem not far from the crossing, during the War of 1812. We nearly lost that conflict, but we learned a key lesson: Our nation’s independence, prosperity, and future require an assertive federal role and presidential leadership, to ensure a robust industrial base and supporting infrastructure. 

Indeed, two decades earlier, Alexander Hamilton had delivered his seminal “Report on Manufacturers” to Congress in Philadelphia, pleading that “every nation ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply.” 

Hamilton’s vision of the American way was rejected by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Neither was bullish on the economic founder’s elevation of manufacturing and “internal improvements.” But the British forces’ burning of the Capitol and the White House during his presidency convinced Madison that his colleague had been right.

In his second term, the father of the Constitution began to implement the American System, a formula that transformed an agrarian federation into the world’s strongest industrial power by the end of the century.

Free-market critics will strenuously object to bold federal leadership, including anything that smacks of “buy and hire American.” Subordinating country to economic efficiency, the neo-liberal crowd is perfectly content with massive foreign economic dependencies that have left Middle America behind. Their protests will surely be joined by radical environmentalists and well-heeled anti-growth litigators, for whom American infrastructure, industry, and the jobs they provide are considered dispensable.

But if Biden wants to strengthen the American economy, a “build back better” of the Francis Scott Key Bridge represents a fortuitous opportunity to showcase his presidential leadership, advance his Buy American principles, and elevate American industry and infrastructure to new prominence — reconstituting the American way for the 21st century.

Kevin L. Kearns is president of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. Robert W. Patterson, former vice president of the Council, served as associate commissioner for communications at the Social Security Administration from 2017 to 2019.