Keystone project includes foreign steel

President Donald Trump pledged to use American steel for infrastructure projects as an appeal to working-class voters and members of the steel industry.

Now that he's in office, Trump seems to have narrowed the focus of this promise. He issued a limited presidential memorandum on Jan. 24 calling for U.S oil pipelines to use American steel in their construction.

The memorandum directed the secretary of commerce to "develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the United States," use materials and equipment produced in the United States, "to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law."

Yet the promise has hit a couple of public relations setbacks. The high-profile Keystone XL pipeline will not have to use only American steel in its construction.White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders explained during a press gaggle on March 3. She said it was because the Keystone XL pipeline was not a "new" project it was not bound by the memo.

"The steel (was) already literally sitting there, it would be hard to go back," said Sanders.  The company building the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada, said in a 2012 press release that half of the steel for the pipeline will come from an Arkansas plant of the India-based company Welspun.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to invest $550 billion in infrastructure spending but he has not yet offered a bill on this issue to Congress. If and when he does, we'll look to see if there are American steel requirements in the legislation.

These developments regarding the pipeline suggest Trump may run into complicating factors in trying to keep his promise to dictate what type of steel private infrastructure projects use. Thus far, we rate this promise Stalled.