Pentagon Brings Clarity to Buy American Requirements. (VIEWPOINT)

• Date: 01 June 2024
• Author: Gonzalez, Marcos,Wulf, Cara,Gonzalez, Marcos^Wulf, Cara
• Published date: 01 June 2024

On Feb. 15 the Defense Department issued a final rule amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to implement Executive Order 14005, "Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America's Workers."

This followed a final rule issued by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council updating Part 25 of the FAR and related clauses to address the executive order requirements, which became effective Oct. 25, 2022. Since that time, there has been a disconnect between the Buy American requirements in the FAR and DFARS; for example, the two notably required different percentages of domestic content for an end product to qualify as a "domestic end product."

The update should eliminate that disconnect and the confusion that resulted from the application of different domestic content thresholds in the two rules. The department's changes to the DFARS track most of the FAR changes, with some notable differences.

For example, the DFARS addresses qualifying country end products and components. Its definition adopted the amounts and timing of the threshold increases in the FAR; however, its definition of "domestic end product" allows components "mined, produced or manufactured" in qualifying countries to count toward the...