Buy America preference

Definition

The domestic-content rule a federally funded job puts on the material a house supplies.

Why It Matters

It attaches to the goods and not to the contractor, so a supply house serving public work is the party that has to say where a product was made. The standard is written per material: non-ferrous metals count as produced in the United States only where every manufacturing process, from initial smelting through final shaping, coating and assembly, happened here. A buyer inherits whatever the seller has been certifying, so ask which lines carry documentation and which open quotes depend on it, because a line that cannot document its origin is a line that cannot be sold into that work.