2025 Law and Policy – Carrying Forward in the 2nd Trump Administration
By 2016, the year of Donald Trump’s first election, Norman Anderson had been a thought-leader in the blue-chip infrastructure community for over thirty years. Frustrated with the inability of that era’s policy makers to understand and deal with the demands of 21st century infrastructure, he decided to reach out to the incoming Administration in the hope that a businessman without preconceived attitudes would be able to reformulate infrastructure policy to focus it toward the future, make it more nimble and efficient, effectively engage the private sector and otherwise do what is necessary to evolve a policy which will return the U.S. to its proper position as the country with the worlds’ most efficient, most productive and most sustainable infrastructure. In 2016, he established Blueprint 2025 and The Strategic Infrastructure Performance Institute as vehicles to promote that outreach.
The two organizations, together with Norman’s CG/LA Infrastructure, collaborated with the Trump infrastructure team at a high level throughout the term of that Administration –exchanging views, convening and generally promoting a productive dialog with the thought leaders of the infrastructure community. By the end of 2019, despite embedded resistance from the “old guard” which saw infrastructure as largely limited to publicly financed roads, streets and bridges – infrastructure thought leaders agreed that a proper definition of infrastructure would include all of the foundational systems —from transportation to communication, to digitization, satellite imagery and the internet — which would be needed to support progress in the fourth industrial revolution. It was also by that time clearly recognized that the private sector would have to be a driving force and a substantial source of both intellectual and financial capital if goals were to be achieved.
Norman later embodied this important infrastructure philosophy, developed during the first Trump Administration, in his book Vision: Our Strategic Infrastructure Roadmap Forward published in March of 2021. Since his untimely death in December of that year, Norman’s friends and colleagues have been carrying these insights forward by continuing to support the Institute and the Blueprint 2025 Initiative which Norman founded in 2016.
We welcome the opportunity in this second Trump Administration to carry forward what Norman started in Trump I.
Infrastructure and Advanced Technology
As demonstrated by the projects described on the SINFPI website and the materials included in the Analysis heading, 2025 L&P is deeply committed to the development of new approaches to the government’s engagement with the private sector in the restoration, upgrading and modernization of our nation’s infrastructure and the rapidly evolving new technologies which that infrastructure will support and advance. We are supporting efforts, through Blueprint 2025 and the non-profit Strategic Infrastructure Performance Institute to facilitate planning for that effort and promote private sector outreach which will advance new approaches, mobilize private sector resources and otherwise promote full realization of this critical potential. Consistent with these themes, our emphasis and our advocacy efforts will continue to be on 21st Century infrastructure and new technologies, mobilization of private funding sources as well as the governmental support, authorizations and approvals required to develop the cutting-edge projects rapidly, efficiently and effectively.