Executive Order 13788: Hire American and Buy American

What the Executive Order says

Executive Order (EO) 13788 is entitled "Buy American and Hire American" and has 6 sections.

Section 1

This section provides definitions for "Buy American Laws", "Produced in the United States", "Petition beneficiaries", "Waivers" and "United States workers".

Section 2

This section defines the policy which has two parts, one is about directing government procurement to use domestically manufactured goods and services as much as possible.  The second part is to restrict immigration of workers so that citizens will have more opportunities to find a job.

Section 3

This section has 6 subsections.  The first two subsections directs the agencies and the heads of those agencies are to review their compliance with the Buy American laws and to take measures to minimize usage of waivers.  The next subsection calls for guidance to be written for the review and implementation by the agencies of the Buy American laws.  The next subsection mandates a written report by each agency on the finding pursuant to the review of practices that was stipulated.  The next subsection, which does not seem to make a lot of sense in the context, calls for a review of free trade agreements and the WTO agreement and how that impacts domestic procurement preferences.  This seems to be out of place here because it is asking a leading question.  The last subsection is asking for a report to be submitted to the President summarizing all of the other reports provided.

Section 4

This section gives some additional guidance for the use of waivers which result in procurement from non-domestic sources.  It adds complications and additional required justification for use of waivers.

Section 5

This section directs that new guidance is issued for the administration of the immigration system to further restrict immigrants from coming to work in the USA.  Specifically targeted is the H-1B visa program and there has been some backlash from the technology sector regarding this issue.

Section 6

This section contains the usual fine print to assure that the EO is constitutional.

My Commentary

It is good policy that government procurement favors domestic sources for a variety of reasons.  I would be surprised if government procurement has not actively tried to support domestic manufacturing always.  There is a lot of reports and facts that need to be gathered, it will unlikely find any real big hitters with regards to inappropriately awarded foreign contracts.  Further, the reality of the current supply changes in the manufacturing industry is that they are global in nature already and there is little hope for and little real value in trying to put that genie back in the bottle.
The second prong of the offensive is simply a sign of the vitriolic xenophobia that this administration has expressed since day one.  I honestly feel that this is offensive and thankfully really significant changes would require Congress to pass legislation, although guidance and changes to regulations are probably going to have some effect although it will be mostly due to reputation rather than because of the effectiveness of the change in policy.  The end result here is that the best and brightest will not come to America and then go somewhere else.  This will hurt competitiveness in the long run.