The Berry Amendment & the Uneven Playing Field
The Berry Amendment requires the U.S. military to buy American-made textiles, clothing, and food. It is one of the few laws that consistently supports domestic manufacturing — and it exists because almost every other industrial nation already does the same for its own producers, often far more aggressively.
What is the Berry Amendment?
First passed in 1941 as a wartime appropriations rider, the Berry Amendment (now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 4862) requires that the Department of Defense spend its funds on food, clothing, fabrics, fibers, yarns, hand tools, stainless steel, and certain other items that are grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States.
The intent is simple: in a real conflict, the country cannot rely on a foreign supply chain for the boots, uniforms, body armor, parachutes, and rations its service members depend on. Domestic capacity has to exist in peacetime if it is going to exist when it is needed.
A related law, the Kissell Amendment (2009), extends similar requirements to certain Department of Homeland Security procurement — most visibly TSA and Border Patrol uniforms.
Why Made-in-America manufacturers can't compete on price alone
When you compare a $12 American-made T-shirt to a $4 import, you are not really comparing two factories. You are comparing two industrial policies. Most of the price gap is not labor cost — it is the accumulated effect of subsidies, tax preferences, cheap state-backed financing, and currency policy in the exporting country.
U.S. manufacturers compete largely on their own. Their foreign counterparts compete with their governments standing behind them. That is the gap the Berry Amendment was written to close inside defense procurement, and it is the gap MIADB exists to close in everyday consumer choice.
How other countries back their manufacturers
Industrial policy is the rule globally, not the exception. A few examples of what American factories are competing against:
China
Direct production subsidies, below-market loans from state banks, tax rebates on exports, subsidized land and electricity, and state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors. Programs like “Made in China 2025” explicitly target dominance in semiconductors, robotics, EVs, batteries, and aerospace.
European Union
The Common Agricultural Policy alone funnels roughly a third of the EU budget to producers. “Important Projects of Common European Interest” (IPCEIs) and the European Chips Act channel tens of billions of euros into batteries, hydrogen, microelectronics, and cloud infrastructure.
Germany
KfW state development bank lending, Mittelstand support programs, dual-system vocational training paid for jointly by the state and industry, and short-time work (Kurzarbeit) subsidies that keep skilled workers on payroll through downturns.
Japan
METI-coordinated industrial planning, JBIC export financing, R&D consortia, and recent multi-billion-dollar grants to onshore semiconductor fabs (TSMC Kumamoto, Rapidus). Long-standing keiretsu structures keep supply chains domestic.
South Korea
Government-directed credit to chaebol conglomerates, export financing through Korea Eximbank, and large public R&D spending in semiconductors, displays, shipbuilding, and batteries.
India
Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes pay manufacturers a percentage of incremental sales for producing electronics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and solar cells domestically — on top of import tariffs that protect those same sectors.
France
Direct stakes in strategic firms (Airbus, EDF, Renault), the France 2030 investment plan, and aggressive use of public procurement and “Made in France” labeling to steer demand toward domestic producers.
Vietnam, Bangladesh & others
Export-processing zones with multi-year tax holidays, duty-free imports of inputs, suppressed labor costs, and weaker environmental enforcement. The headline price of imported apparel reflects all of these together.
What that means for U.S. manufacturers
American factories pay full freight on land, capital, energy, healthcare, and labor. They generally do not get subsidized inputs, export tax rebates, or a state-owned bank willing to lend below cost. Sector-specific U.S. programs do exist — the CHIPS and Science Act, IRA clean-energy credits, Defense Production Act Title III investments — but they are narrower and more recent than what competitors have been doing for decades.
The result: a domestic producer can be more efficient, pay better wages, and meet stricter environmental and safety standards, and still be undersold on the shelf. Without policy support like the Berry Amendment — and without consumers actively choosing American goods — the industrial base quietly erodes.
Where MIADB fits in
The Berry Amendment uses federal purchasing power to keep critical domestic capacity alive. Consumer purchasing power is much larger — and far less coordinated. MIADB exists to make it easy: a searchable database of verified Made-in-America products and the companies behind them, so the choice to buy American doesn't require an afternoon of research.
Further reading
- 10 U.S.C. § 4862 — the current statutory text of the Berry Amendment.
- Congressional Research Service, “The Berry Amendment: Requiring Defense Procurement to Come from Domestic Sources.”
- OECD reports on government support to industry and the measurement of below-market finance.
- WTO subsidy notifications and U.S. Trade Representative annual reports on foreign trade barriers.
This page is an educational overview, not legal or procurement advice. For contracting questions, consult the Defense Logistics Agency or qualified counsel.