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Biden's 'Buy American' Rules Are Getting in the Way of Biden's Rural Broadband Push

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Elderberry:
Reason by Eric Boehm 4/7/2023

Industrial policy is never as simple as it seems.

The Biden administration has framed its new, tighter "Buy American" regulations as a way to bolster domestic manufacturing and benefit parts of the country that have been left behind by technological innovation.

To many of those same communities, the White House has promised better connectivity and higher internet speeds. The bipartisan infrastructure plan signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 dedicated $42 billion to expanding broadband access, with much of the funding aimed at laying fiber optic lines in parts of the country where they don't exist.

There's one small problem with all this: Finding enough fiber optic cables that comply with the Buy American rules.

Despite being the world's top importer of fiber optic cable, America also produces a lot of it—more than 72 million miles of the stuff last year, according to the Fiber Broadband Association, an industry group. The fiber optic line itself is a thin strand of glass, but it is surrounded by a protective coating made from steel, copper, aluminum, plastic, and other materials.

Under Biden's Buy American rules, 55 percent of the component parts of any product used in a federal construction project must be sourced in the United States. That disqualifies any imports of finished cable, but it also wipes out most of the available American-made supply since many of the component parts are sourced overseas.

More: https://reason.com/2023/04/07/bidens-buy-american-rules-are-getting-in-the-way-of-bidens-rural-broadband-push/

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