Remember how Trump was going to try to deflect the global disaster his Republican Party is a couple of weeks ago, by unveiling some terrible idea for an infrastructure plan? Yeah, we all forgot under a barrage of reminders that this administration rose to power in no small part due to the promise that they would start a race war against anyone not white. And so while we have been awaiting the official announcement of how Trump and his transportation secretary Elaine Chao are going to try to privatize our transportation system and make corporations more money at the expense of tax payers, China decided to go ahead and do this:
Trump’s response over the past few days has been to disband plans for an “infrastructure council,” pictured here.
The impact of scuttling the infrastructure panel wasn’t immediately clear. Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, told reporters Tuesday that the administration hopes to get an infrastructure bill approved this year. An as-yet unwritten tax bill would go first, Cohn said, with the aim of passing it by Thanksgiving. An infrastructure bill could start in the House as soon as a tax measure moves from the House to the Senate, he said.
Trump had lauded having the input of private-sector builders in delivering his infrastructure plan. He called out LeFrak of the LeFrak Organization and Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, during a June 7 speech in Cincinnati as part of the White House’s “infrastructure week” to praise their participation.
Getting our high speed rail projects moving forward under Trump has already been slowed down, even without his lack of a working infrastructure plan. Adam Khan on Twitter says that the same distance that China’s high speed rail train will cover in 4.5 hours would take a touch longer right now in the United States—in 2017.
Google, says that isn’t exactly true—it would take over 21 hours. The good news for Donald and his crew is that they usually fly on private jets, or on private tax-funded airplanes to get from place to place.