For eight years in Congress, I sat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and spent countless field visits examining bridges, levees, highways, and dams to see how we can make sure our infrastructure is safe and supports economic growth. Our transportation is a modern marvel, but we have let it fall into a level of disrepair that courts disaster. Now, in addition to insufficient funding and maintenance there is a new infrastructure threat – a shortage of reliable, fundamental construction materials.
Domestic cement production is in decline, and imports now supply roughly 22 percent of what we use, much of it from countries like China, Turkey, and Vietnam that face global supply pressures and no obligation to meet U.S. quality standards. It’s a problem that nobody in Washington wants to talk about.
One in three U.S. bridges now needs repair or outright replacement. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when a bridge is rated a “2 out of 100.” Communities get nervous, worried that daily commutes or school drop-offs will be complicated by compromised, aging crossings.
And bridges are just the beginning. Cement is the foundation, literally, of the dams that hold back floodwaters, the ports that move our goods, and the roads that 4.9 billion vehicles use every single day. America needs an estimated 32.9 million metric tons of cement a year just to build and repair our highways, streets, and bridges, on top of what’s needed for housing and water infrastructure.
When I sat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, we talked about supply chain resilience in the context of steel and rail cars. Cement deserves the same scrutiny, because a shortage can delay highway projects and jeopardize the hardened military installations, energy facilities, and disaster response infrastructure that our national security depends on.
We have a federal law, Build America, Buy America, that requires the iron and steel used for taxpayer-funded projects to be made in the United States. That’s smart policy. It protects American workers and ensures our infrastructure isn’t dependent on unreliable foreign suppliers. But the cement that goes into the concrete forming every bridge deck, pier, and foundation is explicitly excluded from those same protections. We protect the steel skeleton of a bridge and leave its foundation exposed. That gap is a real vulnerability for our infrastructure.
The fix here is straightforward. Treat cement the way we already treat steel and iron. Cement is a $159 billion industry supporting 577,000 American jobs, yet it gets a complete carve-out from Buy America requirements, though other foundational materials are covered.
Foreign producers have flooded our market with cement priced as low as $30 to $40 a ton against a domestic benchmark of roughly $160 a ton, a gap driven by subsidies and price manipulation rather than fair competition. Closing that loophole and expanding Build America, Buy America to explicitly include cement is a matter of consistency. If we trust American iron and steel to hold up a bridge, we should trust American cement to secure its footings and pave the way across.
But procurement preferences alone won’t solve this if we can’t produce more cement domestically. American producers have invested billions in plants and equipment, yet permitting a new plant or modernizing an existing kiln can take a decade or more, and analysts project the U.S. could face a 50-million-ton supply gap by 2050 if nothing changes. Congress and federal regulators need to pair Buy America expansion with real regulatory relief. That means expedited environmental review for plant modernization, faster permitting timelines, and incentives for producers who invest in new domestic capacity.
Congress and federal agencies should make this a priority. Lawmakers should pursue cement procurement preferences in future infrastructure legislation, direct regulators to streamline permitting processes that are strangling new capacity, and finally close the Build America, Buy America gap.
I spent years on the Transportation and Infrastructure committee arguing that infrastructure investment only works if it’s paired with the discipline to spend those dollars wisely. Buying foreign cement for American infrastructure is a risk we do not need to take. Let’s build the next generation of American bridges, dams, and roads the same way we build everything else that matters – with American materials, American workers, and American strength.
Jeff Denham, former U.S. Representative (R-CA) and member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure