Construction industry officials are poring over President Trump’s new executive order that aims to expand “Buy American” preferences for infrastructure projects. They want to determine what the impact will be. The Jan. 31 directive covers more types of materials and projects that use a much wider range of federal financial aid categories than a 2017 Trump order did. 

It wasn’t immediately clear how the new executive order will apply to highways, the largest federally assisted infrastructure program. Federal-aid highway work is covered by a different preference program, called Buy America, which was created by a 1982 statute.