Local content in the United States: Buy American
In March 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden once again reinforced the «Buy American» policy.
Officially, Biden then announced that local content requirements on domestic parts purchases by the federal government would gradually increase to 60% in 2022, and to 65% and 75% in 2024 and 2029, in that order.
In addition, the U.S. government said it would increase the margin of price preference for federal procurement of critical products.
These critical products include semiconductors, active pharmaceutical ingredients, large capacity batteries, etc.
Then, in February 2023, Biden announced a new rule in his 2023 State of the Union address, requiring all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be manufactured in the United States.
Local content
Since 2021, the U.S. government has spared no effort to reinforce its «Buy American» policy.
In January 2021, Biden signed the Executive Order to Ensure the Future is Made Across America by Every American Worker, just five days after taking office, which not only calls for the purchase of American-made products and services with a government budget of $400 billion over four years, but also places tighter restrictions on the federal government’s procurement of foreign products.
In recent years, the use of federal funds to increase purchases of U.S.-made goods and services has been an important part of the U.S. government’s approach to investing in domestic production and rejuvenating domestic manufacturing.
As early as 2009, the United States enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provides that in the «use of American iron, steel and manufactured goods» none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by the Recovery and Reinvestment Act may be used, with certain exceptions, in a construction or public works project unless all of the iron, steel and manufactured goods used as construction material in the project are produced in the United States.
After referring to the above facts, China‘s Ministry of Commerce said that «the impact of the apparent discriminatory policy» arising from the «Buy American» policy continues to expand, which may violate the basic principle of non-discriminatory treatment of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and constitute restrictions on other GPA Parties that seriously distort world trade and investment in related industries.
