By Nick Pasion – Reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal
The Port of Seattle has identified more than $337 million in airport grants at risk under the Trump administration.
Elizabeth Morrison, the port’s director of corporate finance, said in a presentation to port commissioners March 11 that the grants are largely included in the agency’s 2025-2029 capital improvements plan for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, making up about 7% of the funding.
Many of those grants are at risk because they fund green-energy projects or link back to initiatives pushed by the Biden administration, two areas Trump has targeted since taking office.
But while the port said its federal grants are largely not yet on the chopping block, the recent accounting of its at-risk funding highlights the uncertainty port official face under the Trump administration.
“Quite honestly, I’m waking up most nights stewing about how we approach this,” Port Commissioner Ryan Calkins said during the meeting. “Because it is a huge deal for the Port of Seattle and for virtually every institution that receives some form of federal funding.”
Morrison said any reduction in funding would require either spending cuts or tapping into other funding sources. The port receives state grants that could also be affected by changes at the federal level.
For the Port of Seattle, grants were graded based on risk level, ranging from “very low” to “high.”
Among the lowest-risk grants were those the government already awarded, worth about $80.2 million. The highest-risk grants were pending and future ones, the largest being $191 million from Joe Biden’s Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, which Trump paused funding from in January after taking office.
“The fact that we’re even talking about these as risky is a change,” Morrison told commissioners.