Made in America

Buy American sounds simple. So why does the same product count as American under one federal rule and foreign under another? And who decides?

Made in America answers those questions as a story, not a rulebook. It follows domestic content from the Buy American Act, signed on a president's last day in office in 1933, to the rules that now reach every federal purchase, grant, and tax credit, through the people who made the decisions and the people who lived with them: a brewery that wanted its duty back on a shipment of corks, a bridge built with foreign steel under a rule that allowed it, a flashlight assembled in Vermont that a court called Chinese, and the subcontractor at the bottom of the chain who signs for all of it.

Inside, you will discover:

• Why there are three different tests for American origin, and which one governs the purchase in front of you
• How a cork that stayed a cork in 1908 still decides what counts as manufacturing today
• Why "assembled in the USA" is not the same as made in America, in law or on a label
• How a fire alarm system can pass one federal rule and fail another without a single part changing
• What a certification letter actually proves, and who is holding it when it is wrong
• How the Pentagon's own rules reach down to the alloy in a magnet
• How a waiver is granted, who reviews it in Washington, and why a project can wait on the answer
• How a tariff on an imported part can change the answer without changing the product
• What fifty state rulebooks add on top of the federal ones

Written for readers, not specialists. Every rule is explained once, in plain English, at the moment the story raises it. No background in procurement or law is needed.

Fair to every side. Agencies, manufacturers, contractors, and public owners each get their case. Presidents of both parties appear using the same laws, and the book's conclusions are about rules and institutions, not parties.

Completely rewritten for 2026. This second edition is a new book, carrying the story through the overhaul of the federal acquisition rules, the highway manufactured-products requirement, the tax code's reversal, and the 2026 tariff decisions.

If you bid on public work, sell into it, or simply want to know what the label means, this is the story of how the rules got here and what to watch next.