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President Biden on Friday visited Pittsburgh to tout the “remarkable economic progress” during his first year in office and passage of his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which seemed all the more urgent after a bridge in the city collapsed just hours before his visit.
The 450-foot bridge in Frick Park, which was erected in 1974, collapsed while a Port Authority bus and multiple cars were on it, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Ten people were injured in the collapse—none seriously. The paper, citing PennDot, reported that the bridge was rated in poor condition prior to the incident.
Biden told reporters in the city that $1.6 billion in his infrastructure package has already been earmarked for bridges in the state. The New York Times reported that the president said he wants to avoid a headline saying someone was killed in a similar collapse.
“We are gonna rebuild that bridge and every other bridge… That’s how we’re going to build another America,” Biden said.
Construction of bridges in the U.S. peaked in the 1960s and 70s, the Times reported, meaning that many bridges in the U.S. are at middle age.
Biden visited the scene and reiterated that his administration is going to fix all 43,000 bridges in the U.S. considered to be in poor condition.
“And by the way, we’re going to give you guys more money too—the cops,” Biden said, according to CNN.
While the U.S. contends with collapsing infrastructure and an ancient rail system, Beijing announced plans to extend the length of its high-speed rail networks to 31,070 miles by 2025, RT reported, citing a five-year plan from the State Council.
The report pointed out that the rail network in China will be so vast, it will stretch far beyond the combined high-speed rails in Spain, Japan, France, Germany, and Finland.
TRENDSPOST: As we have forecast, the 20th century was the American century—the 21st century will be the Chinese century. The business of China is business; the business of America is war.
While America spent countless trillions waging and losing endless wars and enriching its military-industrial complex, China has spent its trillions advancing the nation’s businesses and building its 21st-century infrastructure.
And while America and Europe have outsourced their manufacturing to China and developing nations to increase profit margins, China’s dual circulation/self-sustaining economic model is directed toward keeping jobs and trade and profits within the nation, thus relying less on global trade.
In 2019, about 230,000 bridges in the U.S. alone needed repair, and 47,000 were downright unsafe, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. The number has only grown since then, yet politicians are unable to allot the money needed to fix them.
The United States will spend only $27 billion to rebuild America’s bridges over the period of 5 years, or some $5.4 billion a year, while the Military Industrial Complex was awarded several hundred billion from the 2022, $768 billion Defense Budget.
And, Mr. Biden just spent over $10 trillion in COVID test kits to the American public, while chump change is being spent on rebuilding bridges and the nation’s infrastructure. (See “$2.3-TRILLION INFRASTRUCTURE DEAL: WON’T FIX INFRASTRUCTURE, WON’T FIX ECONOMY” and “THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS WAR.”)