Biden plans executive order to force the government to buy more products built in the US

President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the first days of his presidency.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden is aiming to boost US manufacturing with a new executive order Monday.
The order aims to increase the amount of US-made goods being bought by the federal government.
It can be seen as a continuation of, or rival to, Trump's "America First" policy.
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President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order on Monday aimed at increasing the amount of US made goods bought by federal government agencies and boosting the manufacturing sector in the US, the White House said.

The "Made in America" executive order aims to ensure that "when the federal government spends taxpayer dollars they are spent on American made goods by American workers and with American-made component parts," said the White House in a briefing document shared with media outlets including Insider.

President Donald Trump during his time in office signed a series of orders compelling US government agencies to boost their purchase of US-made products, which the Biden order aims to expand on. It also seeks to close loopholes that let some agencies dodge the instruction.

The president has said that he will implement a $400 billion procurement plan to "power new demand for American products, materials, and services."

Per the White House briefing, the order will:

Boost domestic manufacturing by increasing the threshold for how much of a product that must be made in the US before it can be purchased by an agency, and the amount it can cost relative to products made abroad.
Crack down on waivers which let agencies avoid the requirements.
Connect agencies with a network of domestic suppliers.
Require agencies reviews how they are implementing the rules.
Appoint a senior official to the Office of Management and Budget to enforce the order.

After taking office last Wednesday, Biden has issued a series of executive orders, mostly designed to reverse Trump administration policies on issues like climate change and immigration. However Biden's "Made-in-America" policies can be seen as a continuation of, or rival to, Trump's "America First" policy.

Biden's policies are part of his "Build Back Better" plan to revitalize the US economy, which was devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Economists in comments to The Wall Street Journal have criticised the "Buy American" plans, saying they could increase the prices for some goods and could lead to foreign countries attempting to block US imports.

President Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election was partly credited to his appeal to working class voters in areas where US manufacturing has been on the slide for decades. Trump's trade policy was mainly focussed on imposing tariffs on goods from foreign markets, boosting government purchase of domestic goods, and renegotiating trade deals.

On the campaign trail Biden pledged to overhaul federal government procurement rules to boost manufacturing in a way he claimed was more coherent than Trump's plan.

Marc Garneau, Canada's foreign minister, has criticized Biden's Buy American policies, saying they could damage trade between the nations, which in 2019 was worth around $2 billion a day in goods and services.

"President Biden is aware of it and the Prime Minister made that very clear that we are concerned about Buy American policies, because it actually harms our bilateral trading relationship which is so tightly integrated," Garneau said in an interview with Canada's CBC News.

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