President Donald Trump plans to include $200 billion for infrastructure in his budget proposal next week, a move that aims to spark at least $800 billion in additional private and public investment.
The federal funds will be spent over the next 10 years and will be included in Trump’s budget proposal, which will be released May 23, Bloomberg reported. Trump floated a $1 trillion infrastructure plan in October, and his budget proposal shows that a majority of that sum will depend on the private sector and state and city governments.
In January, Trump formed a council to monitor national spending on infrastructure projects, which counts developers Richard LeFrak and Steven Roth among its members.
It’s likely that the federal government will encourage certain kinds of public-private partnerships whereby a city or state leases a public asset to the private sector in exchange for an upfront payment, which can then be used to pay for other improvements.
It’s unclear exactly where the federal funding will be spent, but a Trump transition team memo leaked just after the inauguration listed the Gateway tunnel project on a 50-project list of infrastructure priorities. [Bloomberg] — Kathryn Brenzel