US will build its own pipeline and pipes: Donald Trump

In a move that could impact Indian steel industry, President Donald Trump today said that the US will build its own pipeline and pipes, echoing his "America First" doctrine.

Given that Indian companies have been one of the major suppliers of steel pipes, this could have an impact on export of Indian steels to the US.

"We will build our own pipeline. We will build our own pipes. That's what it has to do with, like we used to in the old days," Trump told reporters after he revived two oil pipeline projects blocked by his predecessor Barack Obama on environmental grounds.

Trump gave a conditional go-ahead to the Keystone XL pipeline -- which would carry oil from Canadian tar sands to US refineries on the Gulf Coast -- and an equally controversial pipeline crossing in North Dakota.

"I am very insistent that if we're going to build pipelines in the US, the pipes should be made in the US," Trump said.

"So, unless there's difficulty with that, because companies are going to have to sort of gear up -- much pipeline is bought from other countries. From now on, we're going to start making pipeline in the United States," he said.

Trump rued that the regulatory process in the country has become a "tangled-up mess" and "very unfair" to people.

"This is about streamlining the incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process, and reducing regulatory burdens for domestic manufacturing," he said, signing another executive order.

"Many of the people that we've been meeting with over the last long period of time...the process is so long and cumbersome that they give up before the end. Sometimes it takes many, many years and we don't want that to happen," he asserted.