Washington, D.C. – The Biden administration announced on Friday a final rule for amendments to domestic preferences in government procurement. This includes long overdue actions to strengthen the impact of the Buy American Act, which affords a preference to American-made products and construction materials in government procurement.
The new rule increases the content threshold for products to be considered American-made from the current 55% to 65% by 2024 and 75% by 2029, while also creating a “fallback threshold” in the event that no domestic products can meet the new benchmarks. The final rule also establishes a pathway to further Buy American enhancements for critical products or components.
These improvements were initiated under President Biden’s January 2021 executive order, Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers, and are further backed by Congress in the recent Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul said:
“In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden pledged that ‘when we use taxpayer dollars to rebuild America, we are going to Buy American.’ Today’s announcement is a critical step forward in keeping that promise.
“The events of the past two years have shown that the United States must do more to encourage domestic manufacturing and re-shore supply chains. That starts by making sure that taxpayer money is reinvested right back into American workers and manufacturers whenever possible. These preferences encourage companies to locate factories in the United States to qualify for procurement opportunities.
“We look forward to working with the Biden administration on additional domestic content policies like supply chain recommendations for critical products and components and implementation of the Build America, Buy America policy for infrastructure projects.”