1500 years ago, the Chinese expanded a section of the Great Wall and unknowingly began to build near a section of hills that they later discovered had silver. Not only did the Chinese build a mine at the spot that allowed them to finance the construction, but the bricks made from the silver-rich mud still sparkle in sunlight to this day.
While it took China 2000 years and countless silver qian coins to bring their great wall to completion, President Trump’s promise to “build that wall” will need to be done sooner and cheaper.
The good news is that the enthusiasm for a wall that our electorate used to propel Trump into the White House is shared by construction companies eager for the chance to work on the greatest infrastructure project since Eisenhower built the interstate system in the 1950s.
The Customs and Border Patrol agency (CBP) has officially opened up the gates by inviting proposals for companies with the ambition and the vision to participate in Trump’s great wall. The projected costs run between twelve billion dollars and twenty-five billion dollars, a difference in cost that could fund NASA for a year.
Entries must be received by the end of March before CBP will forward their suggestions to the executive office, and, after the usual pork-barrel spending riders are attached, shovels might begin to break ground as early as the end of summer.
It’s not clear whether the border wall would be solid concrete (like the Berlin Wall) or a set of reinforced barriers (like the Israel-Palestine border wall). Both represent ample opportunity for America’s biggest and best construction firms.
Some 700 different companies have registered to get in on the chance to build the border wall. Some are large construction outfits, the types that Trump has spent the better part of 40 years negotiating with, while others are tech firms that would supply surveillance, and others are simple lighting companies who would build the enormous spotlights needed to keep vigilance after dark.
About ten percent of the registered companies are owned by Hispanics, a convenient fact to remember the next time you’re accused of racism for daring to vote for a president committed to rebuild America. With the maximum value of each contract running to $300 million, there’s plenty of tantalizing prospects to go around.
The biggest winner will almost certainly be Cemex, a cement company whose stock price has gained nearly 20% since Trump’s election. Cemex is the second-largest building-materials company in the world, trailing only Switzerland’s Lafarge Holcim.
Despite earlier claims that they wouldn’t support Trump’s policies, they’ve nevertheless thrown their hat into the ring to supply the billions and billions of tons of cement needed to wall off the Rio Grande. Martin Marieta is another likely winner, who put in a huge bid to build the wall and hopes that the project, as well as the promised trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, will be paydirt (its shares, too, have surged since Trump’s election).
While Martin Marieta will get in under Trump’s insistence that the wall be built by Americans, for Americans, foreign firms might also turn a pretty penny if they make it onto the CBP’s list of approved contractors. Quickfence of Spain, for instance, could be leaned on to supply the security fencing the likes of which they’ve made for airports, prisons, and even gold depositories.
The scale of the project should be emphasized: at least 15 feet high (and preferably double that), with features to deter climbing and tunneling, covering two thousand miles of the largest desert in the western hemisphere.
2020 Surveillance believes that there will need to be security cameras every two hundred feet (at the company’s current annual licensing fees, this would be a $10 million cash cow). Still, many companies are undaunted by the challenge. The KBR engineering firm, for instance, helped to design and build the secure holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, making it secure against the most dangerous persons in the world.
Like Trump, some of the larger firms are famous for strong-arming suppliers or partners, which will doubtless make for entertaining negotiations once they have to present a bill to the axeman-in-chief.
The wall, alas, will not be built tomorrow. Legal issues, most notably eminent domain, could keep the shovels at bay. Even so, many companies are lining up for the chance to participate in the wall and put a giant obstacle in between American citizens and their largest problem.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
