American workers are being laid off and taxpayer money is being wasted yet again thanks to President Obama’s Buy American policy. 

Pipe fittings are being ripped from the ground in Sacramento, California. Why? Because the firm that makes them, Cambridge Brass, is based in Canada.  To make matters worse, a huge chunk of the Cambridge employees who have been laid off because of “Buy American” are actually American.  As if the recession isn’t bad enough, a Sacramento Public Works project is going to re-invent the wheel just so they can tick off all the Buy American boxes, provoking more misery for workers on both sides of the border.

Obama’s  $787-billion economic bill requires that  only U.S.-manufactured goods be used in state and municipal infrastructure project bought with the funding. As a result Cambridge Brass stands to lose more than $1.5- million through the costs of losing the project, legal fees, and the costs of pulling up the pipes- which is being billed to Cambridge Brass. Their workforce, who numbered 140 before the U.S. stimulus package, is now down to 77 and more job losses are inevitable. Many of the jobs lost at Cambridge Brass were from a supply distributor based in Maine. The entire company is actually owned by AY-MacDonald, a U.S. company headquartered in Michigan. 

All this is reminiscient of IPEX Inc., a Toronto pipe-fittings manufacturer, that was forced to rip its products out of the ground at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in California because their fittings weren’t wholly manufactured in the United States.  As a result, IPEX reported significant financial losses and job cuts, which again affected their US Operations.  By the way, IPEX Inc. sourced 90 per cent of their products from Texas.

A bad deal for Canadian companies, American companies, American workers and Canadian workers.  Time to scrap a policy that’s failing, Obama.