Broadening ‘Buy American’ Is The Path To Prosperity

[ABFwife]

Most taxpayers want their tax dollars spent on American-made goods and services. Democrats and Republicans alike share this patriotic “fair trade” value that our government should spend our money at home – whether it’s state and municipal contracts or big federal infrastructure investments. That’s why Buy American laws that give preference to U.S. companies in government contracts are so popular, except with the foreign companies that want to underbid American manufacturers and the other countries that want to take jobs away through bad trade deals.

Those bad trade deals with their generous government procurement chapters have undermined the letter and spirit of our Buy American laws and undercut American workers in manufacturing and the public service sector. The U.S. is a party to the Government Procurement Agreement, for example, a 47-nation side deal to the WTO. It was the subject of a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, which revealed that foreign firms are able to bid on far more U.S. opportunities than U.S. firms are able to bid on foreign ones. Referring to that report, an administration official admitted that “the U.S. may not be getting its fair share of the global government procurement market through its free trade agreement concessions.”

Broadening

[crazy]

I buy American whenever I can.. We recently installed a new "Maytag" dishwasher.. The "made in America" sticker is still on it..