By William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief, Railway Age Magazine; August 7, 2018
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have each passed versions of a U.S. Department of Transportation 2019 appropriations bill that would impose a one-year ban on new procurements of transit railcars or buses from companies owned or subsidized by the Chinese government (namely, CRRC, China Railway Rolling Stock Corp.), if the procurement uses any Federal Transit Administration formula or bus funding, according to an Aug. 1 Eno Center for Transportation report written by Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow and Editor of Eno Transportation Weekly.
“A modified version of an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) was adopted by voice vote as part of a bipartisan ‘manager’s package’ of 40-odd amendments to the four-bill ‘minibus’ appropriations measure for fiscal 2019 (H.R. 6147), which includes the annual Transportation-HUD appropriations bill,” Davis wrote. “The Senate language is a more refined and precise version of language that is already included in the version of the legislation reported in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6072). Section 165 of the House bill prevents any fiscal 2019 FTA funding from being used to procure any rail or transit asset from an entity owned, directed or subsidized by a country that is not spelled out by name in the section but is clearly the People’s Republic of China.”
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