He's not saying corruption costs less, he's saying that US procurement rules compliance eliminates the competitiveness of contract bidding. There's basically t

He's not saying corruption costs less, he's saying that US procurement rules compliance eliminates the competitiveness of contract bidding. There's basically two different construction industries in the US: contractors that do private construction, and contractors that do public works construction. On the private side, you have thousands of companies ranging in size from some random guy who does drywall all the way up to pipeline and oil rig construction contractors. On the private side, all the small guys have been weeded out because of absurdly high regulatory compliance costs(which have been designed to eliminate corruption), and so it's just a handful of extremely large companies. And knowing they have no competition, their bids are obscenely overpriced.