This article is from the financial association and sina finance and economics, Jinshi data integration release
On Tuesday, local time, the U.S. Senate passed the infrastructure investment bill jointly proposed by members of the two parties with 69 votes in favour and 30 votes against it. However, there are still many obstacles to be solved from the actual investment.
At the beginning of the Asian Conference on Tuesday, Schumer, the majority leader of the US Senate, announced that the two parties had reached an agreement on the final passage of the infrastructure bill.
The bill, which has been negotiated for several months, not only reauthorizes the expenditure of existing federal public works projects, but also increases the infrastructure investment by $550 billion. Of which $110 billion will be used to build roads and bridges; US $66 billion for railway construction and US $40 billion for public transport investment; In addition, we have invested 65 billion US dollars in broadband network infrastructure and provided low-income families with 30 US dollars per month of Internet service coupons.
The bill also involves the hot climate change and new energy racetracks in the capital market, of which US $65 billion will be used to improve power generation facilities, and US $50 billion will be used to improve the ability of infrastructure to cope with natural disasters and cyber security attacks; Nearly $7.5 billion will be used to build new electric vehicle charging stations, and another $7.5 billion will be used to purchase low emission products to replace existing school buses and ferries.
Although the bill itself took several months of negotiation before it came to this stage, it can be said that the legislative battle in this round of infrastructure investment has not been more than half.
First of all, the trillion dollar infrastructure bill still needs to be considered and passed by the house of Representatives. At present, the house of Representatives is in a summer recess. According to the current schedule, it will not return to work until September 20 at least.
More importantly, there are currently two infrastructure bills in the legislative process. In addition to the one passed by the Senate on Tuesday, there is also a US $3.5 trillion investment bill pushed by the Democratic Party, which focuses on social welfare and climate change policies. The latter is obviously unlikely to get the support of the Republican Party. Therefore, the Democratic Party intends to legislate through the budget mediation procedure, which also means that the 50 Democratic members of the Senate need to be unanimously approved, and the positions of several centrist members will become particularly important. In the next few days, the Senate will vote to unlock the budget mediation process, and then enter the summer recess.
Speaker of the house of Representatives Pelosi also made it clear that the house of representatives will not start the review process before the Senate completes the above two basic establishment laws at the same time.
According to the latest news on August 11, Democrats in the US Senate are continuously pushing forward a budget resolution to establish the $3.5 trillion economic agenda proposed by Biden.
Senators will hold a marathon vote on ten proposed amendments in the next few hours, which may last until midnight local time. Most of these amendments are intended to convey a political message and are unlikely to be adopted. Earlier, the Republicans proposed hundreds of provisions aimed at limiting the Democratic Party's tax increase or amending the immigration law, but in the end, only a small part of them will be voted on, and few will be passed.
a thousand things wait to be done
In fact, the infrastructure of the United States has long needed to be renovated. Many bridges, railways, rivers, tunnels, ground power grids and other infrastructure are on the verge of collapse, and some places are still at the level of the last century.
Research shows that more than 42 million Americans do not have broadband or cannot afford broadband. They also need to go to libraries, schools, McDonald's and other places to access the Internet. One fifth of the expressways in China need to be repaired or renovated, with a total length of nearly 280000 kilometers. 45000 bridges are in disrepair, many of which are in rural areas.
Biden also hopes to invest $55 billion in building new drinking water pipelines, $39 billion for public transportation, $25 billion for airports, $17 billion for ports, and $15 billion for environmentally friendly buses, ferries, and electric car charging stations.
Because the $2 trillion infrastructure plan put forward earlier was opposed by the Republicans and failed to be approved, Biden divided the above-mentioned bill into two parts: one is the $1 trillion proposal, which was jointly promoted with the Republicans who have a willingness to compromise, and the rest hope to obtain special approval from Congress in the future.
One of the smartest measures is to expand Internet services. The White House wants to invest $65 billion in broadband construction. This has benefited rural constituencies where the Republican Party has broad support.
In addition, the losses caused by climate change and natural disasters are also increasing. Last year, property losses reached US $95 billion. US $73 billion will be invested in the modernization of energy supply in the United States alone. In order to improve the ability to fight forest fires, drought and flood, US states and counties also need billions of dollars.
Who is the winner?
Bank of America said that as the latest version of the infrastructure plan is passed by Congress, these measures will be widely beneficial to the public utilities sector, and companies including Exelon (exc) will benefit from them.
The bill covers the U.S. government's spending in many areas, including transportation infrastructure, nuclear energy, carbon capture, power grid and broadband. With this in mind, Bank of America has conducted a study on which companies in the utility sector look most attractive.
Exelon said in its latest financial report on August 4 that it would close its plant in Illinois if supportive legislation was not passed.
In the infrastructure package, more than US $60 billion is earmarked for upgrading the power grid, including transmission and distribution.
The overview of the bill says that this is "the largest clean energy transmission investment in the history of the United States" and will include "building thousands of miles of new and flexible transmission lines to promote the expansion of renewable energy".
Therefore, Bank of America believes that American electric power (AEP), American Corp (AEE) and NextEra energy (NEE) are among the beneficiaries. The company has a buy rating on all three stocks.
Bank of America said that the infrastructure bill also stressed the need to bring manufacturing back to the United States, which may benefit companies such as first solar (FSLR) and maxeon (maxn). The company also gave buy ratings to both stocks.
Disclaimer:
The copyright of this article belongs to the third-party author. Please contact the original author for relevant licensing matters. The views in this article are from the original author and do not represent the views and positions of Jin Shi. In particular, the contents of this article are for reference only, not as practical operation suggestions, and the transaction risk shall be borne by yourself.