With less than a month to go before the 2024 presidential election, industry groups from national construction associations to large trade unions have made their endorsements for the country’s next president.
The two candidates are former President Donald Trump, who seeks reelection after losing his bid in 2020, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who took the torch from current President Joe Biden after he announced he would not seek reelection on July 21. The construction industry faces many issues, and the two major-party candidates have made their policy positions known on several of them.
Here is where industry groups stand on the upcoming election, broken down by candidate:
Kamala Harris
Harris has collected endorsements from some of the country’s largest unions that represent construction laborers. These include the AFL-CIO, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and North America’s Building Trades Unions.
Kamala Harris
The groups praised the Biden-Harris administration’s track record on helping unions, including efforts to create blue-collar jobs via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips & Science Act, which have pumped billions of dollars into construction projects across the country.
“The policies she has helped enact over the last four years, shoulder to shoulder with President Biden, are rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing sector, strengthening opportunity pipelines for historically underrepresented communities and reinvesting in the American middle class,” said Sean McGarvey, NABTU president, in its July 25 news release announcing the union’s endorsement of Harris.
In addition, unions pointed to the administration’s efforts to protect the pension plans of millions of workers in industries across the country.
“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO’s president, in the organization’s release announcing its endorsement of Harris.
Donald Trump
Associated Builders and Contractors, a national construction industry trade association representing more than 23,000 members, has endorsed Trump based in part on decisions made by current President Joe Biden that it called bad for business.
In a letter to Trump’s campaign, ABC President and CEO Mike Bellaman and Buddy Henley, chair of the organization’s board and owner of Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Henley Construction Co., decried the Biden administration’s 2023 decision to mandate project labor agreements on federal and federally assisted projects that cost $35 million or more.
The group claims that the PLA policy prevents non-union workers and businesses from working on federally funded projects. Attorneys say all businesses can win work on federal jobs, but the policies do tip the scale in favor of union builders.
Bellaman and Henley also said ABC would work with a Trump administration to provide construction industry small businesses with “tax certainty and fairness,” and bolster apprenticeship programs.
Donald Trump
“Your support for fair and open competition, job creation, small businesses and expanded workforce development initiatives during your first term in office helped ABC members grow their businesses, upskill their workforce and create career-enhancing jobs,” wrote Bellaman and Henley in the letter.
ABC also praised Trump’s signing of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017, which lowered the pass-through income tax and doubled the estate tax exemption, along with his promise to veto the PRO Act, should it ever reach his desk.
Staying neutral
On the other hand, Associated General Contractors of America will not be endorsing a candidate. The trade association, along with its political action committee known as AGC PAC, doesn’t endorse presidential candidates or contribute to presidential campaigns, said Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and workforce for the association.
“We are willing to work with anyone who wins the White House and it hasn’t been in our members’ interest to take sides in presidential races,” Turmail told Construction Dive via email.
However, Turmail noted that AGC PAC has made contributions to presidential campaigns in the past, most recently to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, which didn’t come with an endorsement. Romney lost the race to then-President Barack Obama.
