Buy America Requirements for Federally Funded Rail Projects (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Pages 3-8
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 3... ...
3 BUY AMERICA REQUIREMENTS FOR FEDERALLY FUNDED RAIL PROJECTS By Timothy R Wyatt, Conner Gwyn Schenck PLLC I
|
From page 4... ...
4 State and local authorities explicitly provides for application of the Buy American Act."6 The GAO concluded that federal assistance programs administered by FRA, FHWA, and Amtrak "do not address the issue" of domestic preferences, and the grant program administered by FTA actually "prohibits domestic preference."7 Shortly thereafter, Congress enacted Buy America provisions applicable to Amtrak,8 as well as FTA and FHWA,9 as amendments to transportation appropriations bills, with the intent to extend the BAA requirements to the transportation grant programs.10 The 1978 transportation grant Buy America provisions used almost identical statutory language to the BAA, with certain key terms and exception conditions left undefined. Beginning in 1982, however, the Buy America provisions applicable to FHWA and FTA were significantly revised by Congress11 to include more specific, quantitative criteria for those agencies to determine whether an exception was triggered, or whether it was appropriate to grant waivers from the requirements.
|
From page 5... ...
5 "mined" materials such as aggregate or sand.21 Likewise, the original Buy America provisions applicable to FTA, FHWA, and Amtrak nominally applied to all purchases of construction materials using funds appropriated for those agencies. Over time, however, most transportation grant Buy America provisions have increasingly focused on steel, with products such as cement and asphalt being expressly removed from coverage of most (but not all)
|
From page 6... ...
6 sembly location for the end product was in the United States. This was not an exception per se, since manufactured products with at least 50 percent domestic content were deemed to be "substantially all" domestic.
|
From page 7... ...
7 "general" nationwide Nonavailabillity waivers, allowing grant recipients or their contractors to purchase certain foreign goods that the agency has determined are not reasonably available, without requiring the grant recipients to specifically request a Nonavailability waiver for those goods. However, unless the federal agency has issued a general waiver, the grant recipient typically must specifically request a Nonavailability waiver when it is unable to identify domestic goods in sufficient quantities or satisfactory quality, or, in some cases, when suitable domestic goods can not be made available within a reasonable time.
|
From page 8... ...
8 inspection.43 Under the BAA, federal agencies are also generally required to submit an annual report to Congress detailing agency purchases of manufactured products with a foreign place of manufacture.44 Note, however, that there is no requirement under the BAA to report foreign components of products manufactured in the United States. There is also generally no requirement under the BAA for federal agencies to publish their intent to purchase foreign goods (in the Federal Register or elsewhere)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.