As contentious and acrimonious as the presidential campaign has been, there are at least two things upon which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree: infrastructure and trade. What the candidates propose to give the transportation sector with one hand, they may be taking away with the other.

On infrastructure, Clinton has proposed a five-year, $275 billion plan that includes a laundry list of items: fix and expand U.S. roads and bridges; more public transit; initiate upgrades on the 25 costliest freight bottlenecks; accelerate next-generation aviation (air traffic control) technology; make U.S. airports “world class;” extend high-speed internet access to all households; and improve U.S. energy, water and wastewater systems. 

Perhaps most interesting to supply chain interests is a pledge on her website to “initiate upgrades on the 25 most costly freight bottlenecks.” All this would be funded by resurrecting the Build America Bonds program. She also proposes to create a $25 billion national infrastructure bank that theoretically would add $225 billion in available investment capital.

Not to be outdone, Trump stated in a Fox Business Network interview that his plan to rebuild America’s failing infrastructure would involve spending “at least double” the amount proposed by Clinton. “You’re really going to need more than that … We’ll get a (bond) fund, we’ll make a phenomenal deal with the low interest rates and rebuild our infrastructure,” he said.

Although Trump hasn’t issued specifics about how the money should be spent, he argues that “nobody can build better than I can. Nobody knows construction better … We have to fix our infrastructure. But we have to fix it without cost overruns.”

So in this most confrontational of presidential contests, the candidates are trying to outdo each other on infrastructure improvement. Both seem to understand that such investment would carry the dual benefit of addressing the inefficiencies that have grown from years of underinvestment while providing job opportunities to sectors of the U.S. labor force still hurting from the 2008 to 2009 recession. And it would all be financed at record-low interest rates that likely won’t be seen again in our lifetimes.

Of course, infrastructure — as demonstrated by Clinton’s laundry list — is a broad concept not limited to transportation-related expenditures. But it does seem likely that freight transport will get a decent slice of the billions of dollars on the table.

So does this represent a break in the infrastructure gridlock that has prevailed for so many years? Not necessarily. The major sticking point has been how to pay for infrastructure and Republicans’ previous reluctance to utilize debt for this purpose.

And, although the Democrats and Trump evidently agree on this approach, the conservative lean of the House, presumably still in Republican hands after the election, may act as a continuing brake on the spending aspirations of the president regardless of who that may be. Still, infrastructure as a front-and-center issue in the presidential campaign? Who would have thought?

But what the freight gods giveth, they also taketh away. The other thing the candidates appear to agree on is free trade — or, rather, not-so-free trade. Trump’s opposition to the free-trade deals as they currently exist forms a core issue of his campaign. And the ardor of former free-trader Clinton has cooled considerably under the pressure from Trump and her former opponent, Bernie Sanders.

It seems clear that the only chance for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is enactment in a lame-duck session of Congress before the next president takes office. President Obama is still a supporter and has promised to sign the legislation if passed, but it will be a heavy lift to get it passed, and it’s getting heavier by the day.

After Inauguration Day, well, who knows? It appears things will be more tumultuous if Trump gets the nod, but in either case the concept of free trade as it has been practiced by our federal government since the days of the North American Free Trade Agreement appears to be in for an overhaul.

The near-term volume effect of this new take on free trade is imponderable at this point. Although it will take years or decades to trigger fundamental changes in our supply chains, the chilling effects of uncertainty can have a quicker impact on new investment and near-term volumes. It’s safe to say that the near-term impact will be negative.

So even though the candidates agree, it’s a mixed bag for freight in this year’s electoral circus.