ABC endorses Donald Trump for president

Donald Trump with wife Melania Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US. (Image: Reuters/Jasper Colt-USA Today)

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a national US trade association representing the non-union construction industry. ABC is an association of 69 chapters with more than 22,000 commercial contractors and construction-related firms among its members.

“After almost four years of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ anti-competitive, inflationary and divisive policies undermining taxpayer investments in America’s infrastructure, ABC is looking forward to working with a president who is willing to welcome all of the US construction industry to rebuild America,” wrote ABC president and CEO Michael D. Bellaman and 2024 chair of the ABC National Board of Directors Buddy Henley (owner and president of Maryland-based Henley Construction) in a letter to the Trump campaign.

In the statement, Bellaman and Henley said a labour shortage of a half-million people and increasing materials prices (up 32% since Biden took office, ABC said) were reasons for their backing of Trump.

The letter also criticised the Biden/Harris administration’s preference to union work.

“For too long, the Biden/Harris administration’s policies have locked out nearly 90% of the construction workforce – that’s more than 7.3 million workers – simply because they have chosen not to belong to a union,” wrote Bellaman and Henley. “The needless exclusion of qualified small and diverse businesses – and their hardworking employees –from building taxpayer-funded construction projects because they are not affiliated with unions must come to an end.”

ABC offered the following bullet points to explain its endorsement.

• Rolling back exclusionary Biden/Harris administration regulations promoting and mandating project labor agreements on federal and federally assisted construction projects, which effectively lock out almost nine out of 10 US construction workers from building taxpayer-funded projects because they are not members of unions.
• Providing construction industry small businesses with tax certainty and fairness.
• Enhancing an inclusive, all-of-the-above workforce development strategy where workers and employers have the freedom to choose the best way to develop the construction industry’s workforce through industry-recognized and government-registered apprenticeship programs that provide value as we build America’s people and projects.

At present, ABC is suing the Biden adminstration over a final ruling regarding public labor agreements (PLA).