GSA has published final rules to carry out a Biden administration executive order building on prior “Buy American” policies, setting increases in domestic content thresholds for procurements to be effective October 25.
Rules in the March 7 Federal Register amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation to increases the domestic content threshold initially from 55 percent to 60 percent, then to 65 percent in calendar year 2024 and to 75 percent in calendar year 2029. The initial increase will be phased in over several months “to allow industry time to plan for the new threshold and to provide workforce training on the new fallback threshold,” it says.
A supplier awarded a contract with a period of performance that spans the schedule of domestic content threshold increases generally “will be required to comply with each increased threshold for the items in the year of delivery,” it adds. However, the rules also allow for exceptions where a “senior procurement executive” determines that would not be feasible.
The rules also allow, until one year after the increase of the domestic content threshold to 75 percent, for the use of the current 55 percent domestic content threshold where an agency has determined that there are no end products or construction materials that meet the new domestic content threshold or such products are of unreasonable cost.
They also provide for higher price preferences for domestically produced end products and construction material deemed to be critical or made up of critical components.
