Federal Register Notice - Final Rule Buy America Requirements for Manufactured Products

FHWA published a Final Rule in the Federal Register this morning amending it’s Buy America regulation to terminate the existing general waiver for manufactured products, and establish Buy America requirements for manufactured products.

A copy of the Final Rule is attached for your use, or you may access it directly here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/14/2024-31350/buy-america-requirements-for-manufactured-products

General Information

Through this rule FHWA is amending its Buy America regulation at 23 CFR 635.410 to establish standards regarding Buy America requirements that will apply to manufactured products on Federal-aid projects. These standards are substantially similar to those established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that apply to manufactured products subject to the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA) provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA – aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or BIL).

This means that to be considered “produced in the United States” and therefore Buy America-compliant, manufactured products must be:

1. manufactured in the United States (“final assembly requirement”), and

2. have greater than 55 percent of the manufactured product's components, by cost, be mined, produced, or manufactured in the United States (“55 percent requirement”).

A manufactured product is defined as an article, material, or supply that has been processed into a specific form and shape, or combined with other articles, materials, or supplies to create a product with different properties than the individual articles, materials, or supplies. There is more detail in the Final Rule regarding this definition, including confirming that in general items are only subject to one set of Buy America requirements. In other words, an item is either classified as a Manufactured Product, Iron & Steel, or Construction Material and is subject only to the Buy America requirements that apply to that classification. Two exceptions specifically called out in the Final Rule are precast concrete products and certain cabinets and enclosures for ITS systems. These items are classified as manufactured products and their iron & steel components must meet FHWA’s Buy America requirements for iron and steel.

Effective Dates

There are three critical dates to be aware of related to this Final Rule.

1. March 17, 2025 – This is the effective date for the Final Rule.

2. October 1, 2025 – This is the effective date for the Final Assembly requirement. All Federal-aid projects obligated on or after October 1, 2025, are subject to Final Assembly requirement of the regulation.

The Manufactured Products General Waiver remains in place until October 1, 2025.

3. October 1, 2026 – This is the effective date for the 55% requirement. This means that, to be Buy America-compliant, for Federal-aid projects obligated on or after October 1, 2026, all manufactured products permanently incorporated into the project must both be manufactured in the United States and have the cost of the components of the manufactured product that are mined, produced, or manufactured in the United States be greater than 55 percent of the total cost of all components of the manufactured product.

Resources

• The Final Rule, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), all comments received, and all supporting material can be found at regulations.gov under Docket Number FHWA-2023-0037 - https://www.regulations.gov/search?filter=FHWA-2023-0037

• FHWA’s Buy America webpage - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/cqit/buyam.cfm

The Division Office will pass along any supplemental information, guidance, or scheduled training webinars that come our way as soon as we can.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Anthony N. Sarhan, P.E.

FHWA – Arizona Division

Deputy Division Administrator

602-382-8989