At least the USA isn’t the only country with idiotic procurement rules:
In the mass-transit business, purchasers want to buy the best equipment at the best price. But they face intense political pressure from the governments that finance these megaprojects to steer contracts to local companies, and workers. Bombardier – like its German, French, Spanish and Japanese rivals in the rail business – knows how to play the national card. That’s why Bombardier engineered a series of European and U.S. acquisitions in the 1980s and 1990s. And that’s why it assembles rail cars in the tiny border town of Plattsburgh, N.Y.
Within Canada, Bombardier splits rail work between its main plant in La Pocatière, Que., and a second plant nearly 2,000 kilometres away in Thunder Bay, to help secure contracts in Canada’s largest province. Alstom is building its own plant in Sorel, Que., to do the Montreal Métro work. It is the taxpayers who are paying for this needless production redundancy.
Wouldn’t it be nice if those surplus workers could be put to work instead building new track?