White House says Keystone XL pipeline exempt from requirement to buy American steel

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The White House said on Thursday that the Keystone XL pipeline is exempt from President Trump's executive order "requiring infrastructure projects to be built with American steel," Ben Lefebvre reports for Politico. "Trump signed the order calling for the Commerce Department to develop a plan for U.S. steel to be used in 'all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired or expanded pipelines' inside the U.S. projects 'to the maximum extent possible'."

"By the White House’s judgment, that description would not include Keystone XL, which developer TransCanada first proposed in 2008," Lefebvre writes. A White House spokesperson said, “The Keystone XL Pipeline is currently in the process of being constructed, so it does not count as a new, retrofitted, repaired or expanded pipeline."

Washington Post fact checkers Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Le noted after the speech that "TransCanada said in 2013 that it had already purchased all of the steel pipe it needed for the Keystone XL, with the rest coming from a Russian-owned plant in Canada, Italy and India. Experts say the plant in Arkansas (owned by an Indian company) is the only one in the U.S. that could build the pipe—and it gets its steel from India."