2015: What is Made in America?

Office of the Chief Economist ♦♦ Economics and Statistics Administration ♦♦ Page 1

Executive Summary

Accurately determining how much of our economy’s total manufacturing 

production is American-made can be a daunting task. However, data from 

the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) can help 

shed light on what percentage of the manufacturing sector’s gross output

is considered domestic. This report works through several estimates of 

how to measure the domestic content of the U.S. gross output of 

manufactured goods, starting from the most basic estimates and working 

up to the more complex estimate, domestic content.

Gross output is defined as the value of intermediate goods and services 

used in production plus the industry’s value added. The value of 

domestic content, or what is “made in America,” excludes from gross 

output the value of all foreign-sourced inputs used throughout the supply 

chains of U.S. manufacturers.

Our analysis reveals that in 2015:

• The value of the gross output produced by U.S. manufacturers was

$5.7 trillion, with 82 percent of that value ($4.7 trillion) consisting of 

domestic content. The manufacturing sector’s value added, which by 

definition is domestic, accounted for $2.0 trillion of this gross output,

while the value of the domestic content of intermediate inputs used by

 

U.S. Department of Commerce

Economics and Statistics Administration

Office of the Chief Economist

2015: What is Made in America?

By

Jessica R. Nicholson

ESA Issue Brief

#01-17

March 28, 2017

In October 2014, we issued a report titled “What is Made in America?” which 

provided several estimates of the domestic share of the value of U.S. gross output of 

manufactured goods in 2012. In response to numerous requests for more current 

estimates, we have updated the report to provide 2015 data. We have also revised 

the report to clarify the methodological discussion. The original report is available at: 

www.esa.gov/sites/default/files/whatismadeinamerica_0.pdf. More detailed industry 

profiles can be found at: www.esa.gov/Reports/what-made-america.
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manufacturers accounted for an additional $2.6 trillion.1 The balance of the $5.7 trillion is 

accounted for by imported inputs.

• The highest dollar values of the domestic content of gross output in manufacturing were in the

food and beverage and tobacco, chemical, and motor vehicles, bodies and trailers, and parts

industries.

• The distinction between the U.S. content of what we produce and consume is stark. Only 53 

percent of the total U.S. final demand for manufactured goods, a subset of total output

consisting of personal consumption, business investment and government purchases, was 

domestically-produced. This figure takes into account both the purchases of imported final 

goods and imported intermediate inputs in U.S.-produced goods.

 

1 Values do not add to $4.7 trillion due to rounding.
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Quantitative Measures of Made in America

Measuring how much of our economy’s total production is American-made is quite challenging. For 

example, a car manufacturer located in the United States typically does not make all the parts of a car; 

rather, the company purchases parts (engines, seats, tires) made by other manufacturers and uses them 

as intermediate inputs which, along with labor and capital, are used to assemble automobiles. These 

intermediate inputs can be either imported or purchased domestically, and domestically purchased 

inputs may themselves contain some share of imported parts. Data from the Bureau of Economic 

Analysis (BEA) help untangle these complex supply chain relationships and shed light on the percentage 

of the value of an industry’s gross output that is domestic. 

Several caveats should be kept in mind.

1. This report does not discuss the “Made in the U.S.A” label overseen by the Federal Trade 

Commission (FTC) nor does it discuss domestic content requirement regulations.2

2. Most of the calculations below focus on the share of the value of U.S. manufacturing gross output

that was actually created here. These measures do not look at the domestic content of what is 

consumed in the U.S, such as a T-shirt made overseas, imported to the United States, and purchased 

by a U.S. consumer. Figure 8 focuses on consumption and investment, and presents estimates of 

the domestic content of U.S. purchases of manufactured goods. 

3. Multi-year comparisons of measured domestic content will be affected by exchange rate 

fluctuations. To the extent that a nation’s currency increases in value, the measured value of the

domestic content of that nation’s output will also increase, all else equal. Similarly, large input price 

fluctuations will also affect multi-year comparisons of various estimates presented in this report. 

4. This report relies on data from BEA’s annual input-output (I-O) tables including the use table, make 

table, and import matrix. The I-O tables provide data on the production relationships between 

industries and commodities in the U.S. economy.3 The import matrix presents estimates of the 

values of imported commodities used as intermediate inputs or purchased as final consumption or 

investment goods. To create this table, BEA makes an assumption to distribute proportionally the 

total value of imports for a commodity across all industries. This distribution is done at a very 

detailed level where many commodities are uniquely used by individual industries. Data limitations 

do not allow BEA to estimate the specific import shares for each commodity by industry.4

 

2 The “Made in the U.S.A.” label is what many people think of when considering what is manufactured in the United States. The 

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has oversight responsibilities for the label and requires that “all or virtually all” of a product, 

including all significant parts and processing that go into the product, must be of U.S. origin. Complying with this standard can 

be more difficult than it would seem because of the ever-growing web of international supply chains. See Federal Trade 

Commission, Made in the USA. Available at: www.business.ftc.gov/advertising-and-marketing/made-usa.

3 For more information on the methodology of BEA’s I-O tables, see: https://bea.gov/industry/pdf/industry_primer.pdf. For

annual data, see: https://bea.gov/industry/io_annual.htm. The annual I-O tables contain less detail and are based on more 

limited source data than the benchmark I-O tables prepared at five-year intervals which incorporate detailed data from the 

Census Bureau’s Economic Census. Currently, the latest benchmark I-O data is for 2007.

4 For more information on this data limitation, see: https://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=453.
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Gross Output

One overall measure of the value of U.S. manufacturing output is gross industry output which equals the 

total value of all final and intermediate goods produced by an industry.5 As shown in Figure 1, in 2015 

gross output of the U.S. manufacturing sector was $5.7 trillion; food and beverages and tobacco 

products accounted for 17 percent of this total gross output, followed by chemical products (14 percent) 

and motor vehicles, bodies, and trailers, and parts (12 percent).6

,

7 Another way to think about gross 

 

5 BEA publishes data on gross output (used in this report), while the Census Bureau publishes data on the total value of 

shipments in the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) and the Economic Census. Gross output is a broader measure; for 

manufacturing it is measured as the value of shipments plus the change in finished goods and works-in-process inventory. In

2015, gross output in the manufacturing sector was $5.7 trillion, while the total value of shipments was $5.5 trillion. Estimates 

for industries within the sector vary between these two series as well.

6 This analysis is conducted using the 19 manufacturing industries identified by BEA in the annual input-output tables.

7 Nominal gross output across manufacturing industries generally increased from 2012 to 2015. Notable exceptions are primary 

metals where gross output fell by 24 percent; and the petroleum and coal products industry, where gross output fell 

dramatically by 39 percent. Because gross output is not adjusted for prices, any increase or decrease in an industry’s output 

over time may reflect either changes in the total amount of goods produced or the prices of those goods. Real output measures 

remove price effects from the historical comparison. Real output, as measured by the Federal Reserve’s industrial production 

indices, was down 6 percent for primary metal products and up 6 percent for petroleum and coal products from 2012 to 2015. 

(Calculated using annual averages; data is from the Federal Reserve, available at 

www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/g17/download.htm.)
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industry output is that it equals the total dollar amount of all the inputs used by an industry to produce

its goods, plus value added—or payments to employees, capital, and the government. Gross output is 

measured in dollar value, not units produced. High-priced goods, like airplanes or cars, contribute a high 

value to gross output for each unit produced. On the other hand, relatively lower-priced items, like a 

box of cereal or a T-shirt, contribute much less value per unit produced.

Value Added

Gross output reveals the total value of U.S. manufacturers’ production including parts used by 

manufacturers as intermediate inputs. By contrast, data on value added, which BEA defines as a 

measure of output after accounting for the intermediate inputs used in production, solely measures the 

additional economic contribution made by an industry to U.S. production. The sum of value added 

across manufacturing is equal to the sector’s contribution to overall U.S. gross domestic product. The 

main components of value added include the returns to labor (compensation of employees), returns to 

capital (as measured by gross operating surplus), and returns to government (as measured by taxes on 

production and imports less subsidies).8

For example, only inputs used by an auto manufacturer, such as the labor and capital required to 

assemble the car parts into an automobile, will be considered as value added by the auto manufacturer; 

the value of other purchased inputs, such as windshield wipers produced by a different manufacturer, 

are excluded. On average for the manufacturing sector as a whole, value added in 2015 was equal to 

about 36 percent of gross output, as shown in Figure 2.

 

8 As with output, both BEA and the Census Bureau (through ASM and the Economic Census) provide estimates of value added. 

Due to different source data as well as methodologies, the two estimates differ considerably. For the sake of consistency across 

measurements, this report uses BEA data to estimate value added. However, because Census data provides a more detailed 

look at sub-industries within the manufacturing sector, it may be more useful in other cases.
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Figure 3 displays U.S. manufacturing industries ranked by the dollar amount of their value added in 

2015. Because of differing contributions of labor and capital, as well as variation in the amount of 

intermediate inputs used by different industries, the order of industries shown in Figure 3 is somewhat

different from the order shown in Figure 1. 

The chemical products industry’s value added of $342 billion in 2015 was the largest, though it 

comprised only 44 percent of the value of that industry’s gross output. For the motor vehicles and parts 

industry, $155 billion, or 23 percent of the value of its gross output, came from value added, while the 

rest came from domestic and imported intermediate inputs. Near the other end of the spectrum is the 

computer and electronic products industry, where 72 percent of gross output was composed of value 

added in 2015.9

 

9 In 2012, value added accounted for 65 percent of gross output from the computer and electronic parts industry. All three 

components of value added increased from 2012 to 2015, with the largest increase attributed to gross operating surplus, which 

accounted for 34 percent of gross output in the computer and electronic products industry in 2012 and 39 percent in 2015. See 

footnote 10 for more information on the components of value added.
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Domestic Sourcing

Value added provides useful information about the contribution of U.S. manufacturing to our economy 

and, by definition, all of value added is domestic in nature. However, it does not provide any 

information about the amount of intermediate inputs that went into making a finished good, nor about 

the origin of these inputs. For example, to say that the value added in the auto manufacturing industry is 

$155 billion does not tell us how “American” a car is. To what extent can cars or any products 

“assembled in America” using imported parts be differentiated from products with deeper American 

origins? 

To answer that question, we define “domestically-sourced intermediate inputs” as those inputs that 

were purchased in the United States (i.e. not imported). Because value added is always domestic, adding 

together value added and domestically-sourced intermediate inputs gives us an estimate of the total 

value of gross output that is derived from domestic sourcing. Figure 4 illustrates this concept by showing 

the calculation for the overall manufacturing sector. In 2015, 88 percent of gross output in U.S. 

manufacturing was domestically-sourced, of which 52 percent was domestically-sourced intermediate 

inputs and 36 percent was value added.

As shown in Figure 5, in each manufacturing industry, with one exception, more than 80 percent of the 

value of total commodity output was comprised of value added and domestically-sourced intermediate 

inputs in 2015. The one exception is the petroleum and coal products industry: historically, many 

petroleum refineries have imported their primary intermediate input—crude oil—which has led to a 

relatively lower share of domestically-sourced inputs. In 2012, the share of domestically-sourced inputs 

in this industry was 60 percent. As noted earlier, U.S. production of crude oil has increased dramatically, 

which has also led to an increase in the share of domestically-sourced inputs in the petroleum and coal 

products industry (73 percent in 2015).

As an estimate of the overall value of what is made in America, the domestic sourcing estimate is 

relatively straightforward and is preferred over gross output, which includes imported inputs, and value
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added, which does not account at all for intermediate inputs. However, a flaw in this measure of what is 

made in America is that it relies on the assumption that inputs purchased from domestic suppliers have 

no foreign content, which is likely untrue. 

Domestic Content

As noted above, the domestic sourcing estimates in Figures 4 and 5 rely on the assumption that 

intermediate inputs purchased in the United States for use in domestic manufacturing do not contain 

any foreign material. While this simplifies the calculation of domestic content, it is possible—and even 

likely—that domestically-sourced intermediate inputs have at least some foreign content that entered 

earlier in the supply chain. A more precise measure of the value of the portion of gross output that is 

made in America would not include the portion of domestically-sourced intermediate inputs that 

originated overseas. To return to the auto parts example, an automobile manufacturer may purchase

engines from a domestic car parts supplier but the pistons used in these engines may have come from a 

foreign source. 
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Thus, to get a more accurate measure of domestic content of an industry’s gross output, we must next

remove the value of foreign inputs from domestically-sourced intermediate inputs (see Figure 6). This 

calculation removes the value of imports at each stage of production sequentially and determines the 

value of the domestic content (including value added and intermediate inputs) of each industry’s gross

output.10 In 2015, the share of domestic content of total output in the manufacturing sector was 82 

percent, 6 percentage points lower than the share of domestically-sourced manufacturing output shown 

in Figure 4.

 

10 BEA developed the methodology for calculating the domestic content of industry production. The calculation relies on a 

series of matrix algebra operations using the estimates from the input-output tables and import matrix.
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Figure 7 shows that, even after correcting for the part of domestically sourced inputs that came from 

foreign sources, a large share of the value of U.S. manufacturing output is comprised of domestic 

content—80 percent or more for most industries in 2015. To see how these estimates of domestic 

content differ from the estimates of domestic sourcing, consider the motor vehicle and parts industry. 

While 82 percent of the gross output of the industry is accounted for by labor, capital, and other inputs 

sourced in the United States (see Figure 5), a relatively large portion of these other inputs contain 

content that was imported from abroad. As a result, as seen in Figure 7, the domestic content of this 

industry is 73 percent, significantly lower than the simpler estimate of domestic sourcing used above. 

Domestic Content of Purchases

To this point, we have focused on the production of manufactured goods in the United States and we 

found that, on average, of the total manufacturing gross output of $5.7 trillion, 82 percent was 

comprised of domestic content. However, while a large percentage of the value of goods that are made 

in America is from domestic sources, this does not necessarily imply that the domestic content of the 

goods that we purchase from our store shelves is also high.

We can look at this same $5.7 trillion in output from the perspective of the sale of goods used as 

intermediate inputs in manufacturing production and the value of final demand by U.S. households, 
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business and government. Again, the value of intermediate inputs used to produce manufactured goods

was $3.6 trillion.

The remainder of the $5.7 trillion is final demand. Final demand is composed of all final purchases by 

U.S. consumers, businesses, and governments; net exports (exports minus imports); and the change in 

private inventories. Subtracting out inventories leaves the value of final purchases made in the United 

States. In 2015, final purchases by U.S. consumers, businesses, and governments of manufactured goods 

was $2.9 trillion—including goods manufactured here and imported from abroad. 

Of the $2.9 trillion, 53 percent was domestic content. This figure takes into account both the purchases 

of imported final goods and imported intermediate inputs in U.S.-produced goods. Figure 8 shows by 

major commodity how much of the value of U.S. final purchases was met by American-made content.

The contrast between the domestic content of American-made goods and what we see in stores is 

especially clear when it comes to apparel.11 Output from the U.S. apparel industry was, on average, 82

percent American in 2015; however, only 16 percent of the apparel that was sold as final products in the 

United States that year was American in origin. On the other end of the spectrum are food, beverage, 

 

11 As in the 2014 report, Figure 8 presents data classified by commodities rather than industries. All previous figures in this 

report present data classified by industries.
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and tobacco products, for which domestic content accounts for 79 percent of the value of what U.S. 

consumers, businesses, and governments purchased in 2015.

Conclusion

As we have seen, there are a number of ways to measure what is “made in America,” all of which have 

some benefits and drawbacks. Gross industry output gives us an idea of the dollar value of what the 

American manufacturing sector produces, but it includes the value of imported inputs. Value added 

excludes the value of all intermediate inputs. 

This report re-introduces and measures concepts that more precisely calculate the portion of 

manufacturing gross output that is “made in America”: domestic sourcing and domestic content. The 

domestic sourcing calculation is relatively simple, but it assumes that all inputs purchased from 

American suppliers were made in the U.S.A. Domestic content, on the other hand, is complex to 

calculate but provides the best picture of what it really means to say “made in America” for a particular 

industry. 

Finally, the measure of what percent of domestic purchases of manufactured goods is met by U.S.

production provides a look from the consumer and business perspective and shows that the domestic 

content of what we produce and what we purchase in the United States is not the same. Although much 

of the U.S. demand for manufactured goods is met by foreign products, it is evident that a large portion 

of the gross output of the U.S. manufacturing sector is domestic. 
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Acknowledgments 

The author would like to thank Ryan Noonan, Economist in the Department of Commerce Office of the 

Chief Economist, who co-authored the original 2014 report and provided comments and other 

assistance in this update.

Additionally, the author would like to thank the following persons who provided comments, suggestions, 

and other contributions to the update of this report. Any errors in the report are solely the author’s 

responsibility. 

Rob Rubinovitz, Deputy Chief Economist, Department of Commerce

Dave Langdon, Economist and Senior Policy Advisor

Regina Powers, Economist

Adji Fatou Diagne, Pathways Economist

Rick Lattimer, Policy Analyst

The following colleagues at the Bureau of Economic Analysis developed the methodology for estimating 

domestic content and provided clarification on concepts, as needed.

Thomas Howells, Chief, Input-Output Statistics Branch

Gabriel Medeiros, Economist, Input-Output Statistics Branch
2015: What is Made in America?

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Suggested citation: 

Nicholson, J. R., & Noonan, R. Office of the Chief Economist, Economics and Statistics Administration, 

U.S. Department of Commerce. (2017). 2015: What is Made in America? (ESA Issue Brief # 01-17). 

Retrieved from http://esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/2015-what-is-made-in-america_0.pdf. 

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