WASHINGTON — President Trump signed five more executive actions Tuesday in a blitz of executive power meant to speed approvals of high-profile energy and infrastructure projects, including two controversial pipeline projects in the upper Midwest.
Trump signed two presidential memoranda intended to expedite the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, but also signed three more longer-term and sweeping directives requiring American-made steel and changing the process of approving and regulating future pipeline and infrastructure projects.
“This is about streamlining the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible, permitting process,” Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony that has already become a trademark of his short presidency.
In reversing the Obama administration policy to disapprove the Keystone pipeline, Trump emphasized that the construction isn’t a done deal. “It’s something that subject to a renegotiation of terms by us,” he said. “We’ll see if we can get the pipeline built. A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs.”
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