By Julian E.J. Sorapuru Globe Staff
WASHINGTON — It was St. Patrick’s Day, and a who’s who of Washington politicians with Irish roots had assembled at the Friends of Ireland Luncheon on Capitol Hill.
Among them, Representative Richard Neal of Springfield. But he wasn’t there just to glad-hand; he had a mission, one written on a piece of card stock.
The longtime Democratic powerbroker’s objective was to get the ear of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. After a long career in politics, the 77-year-old knew better than to open the conversation with a political ask.
“We’re all cheering for your health,” Neal recalls telling Wiles, who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Then he got down to brass tacks: Over the course of 10 months, multiple MBTA subway car shells and parts made in China were intercepted by the federal government en route to the factory in Neal’s home town where they undergo final assembly. Around 150 plant workers were staring down a furlough as a result of the delay, with the looming possibility of future layoffs.
“What,” Neal wanted to know, “could [Wiles] do to get those cars released?”
Withintwo days of that encounter, the workers were informed their jobs were safe and the cars were cleared for their final journey to Springfield. But, according to the White House, Wiles had nothing to do with it.
“Susie Wiles did not make any calls to [the Department of Homeland Security] or [Customs and Border Protection] relating to this matter and did not play a role in this matter,” a White House official told the Globe.
A CBP spokesperson said the agency “did not release any shipments of CRRC rail car parts due to any White House involvement. This shipment release followed established internal protocols.”
Whether it was a result of Neal’s old-school charm or the mundane conclusion of a standard bureaucratic process, the cars are finally on their way. And Massachusetts officials see that as an absolute win.
“We’re talking about hundreds of high-paying manufacturing jobs that are secured. We’re talking about cars for the T that are going to improve service and improve public transit,” Governor Maura Healey, who helped hatch the plan to appeal to Wiles, told the Globe. “So this is hugely important, and I’m proud that we were able to get this project back on track.”
The cars were allowed into the United States March 18 at the Port of Long Beach in California and are expected to arrive in Massachusetts by mid-April.
Chinese rail giant CRRC has been contracted by the state government since 2014 to deliver a fleet of modern Orange and Red Line T cars.
Customs first flagged CRRCsubway parts for investigation at the Port of Philadelphia last May under suspicion they were built using forced labor. Since 2021, it has been illegal to import goods produced via the forced labor of Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region of northwest China into the United States.
CRRC MA, a Quincy-based subsidiary of the Chinese company, has said that this was the first time a shipment was flagged under this law and that it complied with the federal government’s investigation. After a second shipment was seized at the Port of Long Beach in November,spokespeople told the Globein January the company hadformed a special task force to analyze its supply chain, conducted more than 100 visits to supplier sites, and handed over thousands of documents to the federal government for their review.
The burden of proof is high for companies challenged under the law, according to Eli Friedman, a professor of global labor at Cornell University who specializes in US-China relations.
“Proving a negative is famously difficult or impossible. A lot of a company’s supply chains — it varies product to product — but they’re complicated things,” he said.
The adversarial relationship between the US and China also complicates the flow of information.
“Part of the whole dilemma of the [law’s] setup is that the only way to verify, to get information, is basically if the Chinese government allows it to happen,” Friedman said. “And then there’s reason to be skeptical about that information.”
Even so, the investigation did “seem really long,” Friedman said, which suggests “a political calculation that’s going on here,” tying up two frequent targets of the Trump administration’s ire — China and Massachusetts — in one fell swoop.
CBP said it followed “a standard timeframe for assessment” in the Port of Long Beach case, with the review lasting three months, and ending with the cars being denied entry at the end of January. The agency said the importer appealed its original decision on March 2, and, following a reassessment by two trade specialist teams working independently of each other, reversed the decision.
Neal said he initially tried not “to question the sincerity of what [federal officials] were saying” because he supports Uyghur human rights. But as the months dragged on and jobs in his district came under threat, Neal started to feel “the barriers were not legitimate that were keeping the cars in inspection mode.”
The MBTA’s subway replacement project has notoriously been beset by lengthy delays, malfunctions, recalls, and quality concerns. While CRRC fulfilled its obligation in December to deliver all of the new Orange Line cars, there are still more than 180 Red Line cars that have yet to be fabricated, according to a MBTA spokesperson.
It’s unclear what impact the various shipment delays will have on the timeframe of the Red Line car replacement project, but Lydia Rivera, a spokesperson for CRRC MA, said the company “will make every effort to accelerate production.” Rivera added that “142 employees remain furloughed as the company continues to work with the MBTA on a recovery plan to relaunch production and gradually stabilize operations.”
The dean of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, Neal has served in the House for 38 years. But hisinterpersonal skills, Neal said, are something he picked up as a political neophyte navigating the “fairly tribal” politics of 1970s Springfield.
“You had to get to know a lot of people that were different than you,” said Neal, who served as a city councilor, then mayor of Springfield before being elected to the House in 1988.
Neal also lamented the dying art ofreaching across the aisle in the interest of pragmatism. Throughout the Department of Government Efficiency cuts and last year’s record-long government shutdown,severalcongressional Democratsrelied on relationships with GOP colleagues to help save important programs. But those partnerships are not as common as they once were.
“Social media rewards conflict, and I think it rewards purity tests,” Neal said. “Too many elected people would rather fall on the sword of purity than trying to reach their stated goal.”
Neal still signs every letter that comes out of his office by hand, including a hand-written thank you note to Wiles after the subway cars were released. Now more than ever, he said, people in politics must nurture those personal relationships.
“I’m not suggesting that it’s extra-sensory perception or something like that,” he joked, “but I do think that reasoned conversation with political people can have an outcome, right?”
