Trade Protectionism: We Don’t Buy It

(Rachel Pulfer — Canadian Business)

If you're mad about Buy American, here's the good news: so are Americans.

Of all the sectors due to receive stimulus money under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, waste-water management was supposedly one of the most “shovel-ready.” So for Port Washington, Wisc.–based Aquarius Technologies, which makes waste-water treatment equipment, business in freshly stimulated America should be booming. Yet Tom Pokorsky, Aquarius’s president, says that’s not the case. “Almost no new projects have gone forward yet,” he says. “There have been six projects, worth US$15.6 million in contracts, that have been awarded” — generating a grand total of 17 jobs. “But we have nearly US$7 billion to go, and we’ve only got about two years in which it can be spent.”

What’s the holdup? “Buy American,” Pokorsky replies. “No one can figure out how the heck to comply with it.” Read more here.