Biden builds on Trump’s “Buy American” order

Building on a robust “Buy American” policy established by the Trump Administration, President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order to update a process for choosing domestic products for federal procurement.

Biden’s action directs agencies to close loopholes in how domestic content is measured and increase domestic content requirements. It replaces the component test used to identify domestic end products and construction materials with a test that measures domestic content by the value added to the product through U.S. production or U.S. job-supporting economic activity. This will increase the numerical threshold for domestic content requirements for end-products and construction materials.

Biden’s action will also increase the price preferences for domestic end-products and domestic construction materials. The order does not provide specific numbers for domestic content requirements or domestic price preferences. It is unclear how much the percentages will increase.

The executive order creates a Made in America Office under the Office of Management and Budget to update and centralize the Made in America waiver process. This is meant to increase oversight of potential waivers of domestic preference laws.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.