>Of course inviting the Chinese into America to dig holes under our cities would be a political nonstarter. So part of the answer is, we insist on building thin

>Of course inviting the Chinese into America to dig holes under our cities would be a political nonstarter. So part of the answer is, we insist on building things ourselves and we’re not very good at it. I don't think this is really accurate. Surely Chinese companies didn't bring tens of thousands of Chinese laborers to dig subway tunnels in Turkey and Colombia; they hired local labor, right? The Chinese companies' jobs would have been with engineering and such. If the US wanted, they could get Japanese companies to build subway systems. The Japanese have far longer experience at it than the Chinese, and there surely wouldn't be a political problem with Japanese companies doing such infrastructure projects under American cities as with Chinese companies. But I don't think Japanese companies would do much better than American companies. They'd still have to hire local labor and subcontractors and deal with all the crazy laws and regulations that exist in the US (and probably don't exist in Bogota). So it's not that "America isn't very good at building things", I think it's that America has intentionally made itself a place where it's very difficult and expensive for anyone to build things, no matter where the construction company is located.