Congress has passed several laws requiring that goods purchased by federal agencies be produced in the United States. Among these are two separate but closely related laws applying to national security agencies. The Berry Amendment covers direct Department of Defense (DOD) purchases of textiles, apparel, footwear, food, and hand or measuring tools. The Kissell Amendment is more limited, applying to textiles, apparel, and footwear procured by certain Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies. Under these two laws, the purchased items must be 100% domestic in origin, unless exemptions laid out in the laws apply. The two laws are controversial. Proponents argue the amendments are important to the U.S. economy by helping to preserve the U.S. industrial base and creating manufacturing jobs for American workers. They also claim domestic preference laws may lessen dependence on foreign sources for certain critical U.S. military and nonmilitary needs, and that these laws encourage some foreign manufacturers to invest within the United States so that their products can be sold to the U.S. government. On the other hand, opponents believe the laws give monopolies to certain companies, raise the government's procurement costs, and fail to fully utilize the international supply chains that many U.S. manufacturers rely on to meet their production needs. The Berry Amendment (10 U.S.C. §2533a) is the popular name of a 1941 statute enacted as part of the Fifth Supplemental National Defense Appropriations Act (P.L. 77-29). It has been amended numerous times. It became a permanent part of the U.S. Code when it was codified by the FY2002 National Defense Authorization Act ( P.L. 107-107 ). Proposals to alter the Berry Amendment typically are advanced during consideration of defense appropriations acts and the National Defense Authorization Act. DOD implements the Berry Amendment through its Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS). The Berry Amendment specifies that affected products purchased directly by DOD must be "entirely grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States." Unless DOD grants a waiver because domestic firms do not make the product or because other exceptions in the law are met, the entire production process of an affected product, from the production of raw materials to the manufacture of all components to final assembly, must be performed in the United States. As an example, when DOD purchases a military uniform, it must be sewn in the United States using fabric, thread, buttons, and zippers made in the United States from raw materials of U.S. origin. The Berry Amendment mandates a much higher level of domestic content than the Buy American Act of 1933, which generally governs the procurements of other federal agencies. Under the Buy American Act, the final product must be mined, produced, or manufactured in the United States, and if manufactured, either at least 50% of the cost of its components, by value, must be manufactured in the United States, or the end product must be a commercially available off-the-shelf item. The United States has made binding commitments related to the government procurement market under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement (WTO GPA). Of the more than 45 countries that are parties to this arrangement, each has agreed to provide producers in other signatory countries access to its national government procurement markets. This can result in certain "foreign" products being treated as "domestic" ones in specific procurements. However, the agreement expressly does not apply to DOD procurements involving textiles, clothing, food, and hand or measuring tools. This Berry Amendment restriction also applies to most U.S. free-trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, as well as to bilateral free-trade agreements with Australia, Morocco, Peru, South Korea, and Colombia. A second law, sometimes referred to as the Kissell Amendment (6 U.S.C. §453b), is modeled on, but not identical to, the Berry Amendment. The Kissell Amendment was enacted as Section 604 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ( P.L. 111-5 ). It applies to the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), both of which are within DHS. It is implemented through the Homeland Security Acquisition Regulation, which imposes domestic content restrictions on certain clothing, textile, and footwear products acquired by particular DHS agencies when an item is directly related to national security. In introducing the amendment, Representative Lawrence Kissell noted he was particularly interested in supporting the domestic textile industry. Thus, the narrowly defined purpose of the Kissell Amendment is to ensure that DHS purchases of textile, apparel, and footwear products are wholly produced in the United States. The law covers clothi ng (including materials and components), canvas or textile products, natural and synthetic fabrics, individual equipment items, and footwear products. If these items are related to "the national security interests of the United States," they must be "domestically grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States" to the greatest extent possible. Unlike the Berry Amendment, the Kissell Amendment does not apply to food or to hand or measuring tools. Although the Kissell Amendment as enacted applies to all agencies of DHS, in practice its restrictions apply only to the Coast Guard and TSA. The reason for this is that, prior to the Kissell Amendment's passage, the United States had entered into commitments under various trade agreements to open U.S. government procurement to imported goods. However, the WTO GPA entitles the United States to exempt agencies critical to national security from its international procurement obligations. The United States has applied this exemption to those two agencies, so the Kissell Amendment governs their procurement. Other DHS agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Secret Service are not covered by the exemption, and the Kissell Amendment therefore does not apply. Like many other agencies, these agencies' procurement is subject to the less stringent Buy American Act. However, under the Trade Agreements Act of 1979, if a procurement is covered under a trade agreement, then Buy American Act restrictions are waived. Thus, DHS can purchase textile and apparel products from more than 100 countries if certain conditions are met. The United States has also entered into commitments under various free-trade agreements to open U.S. government procurement to imported goods. As a result of these trade agreements, manufacturers in Mexico, Canada, and Chile are treated as "American" sources under the Kissell Amendment. The Berry Amendment includes several exemptions, which may apply at the discretion of DOD. For example, DOD may buy covered items from non-U.S. sources when products are unavailable from American manufacturers at satisfactory quality and in sufficient quantity at market prices; items are used in support of combat operations or contingency operations; products are purchased by vessels in foreign waters (e.g., a Navy ship is docked overseas and the crew needs to purchase textile, clothing, or footwear items); products contain noncompliant fibers, if the value of those fibers is not greater than 10% of the product's total price; items are for emergency acquisitions; products are intended for resale at retail stores such as military commissaries or post exchanges; or the purchase is part of a contract whose value is below the Simplified Acquisition Threshold, generally $150,000, beneath which certain federal procurement regulations do not apply. Kissell Amendment exemptions are often the same as those in the Berry Amendment, such as purchases beneath the Simplified Acquisition Threshold. But there are also some notable differences. For example, the Kissell Amendment has "national security" limiting language that is not included in the Berry Amendment. This restricts Kissell Amendment coverage to purchases intended for or used by DHS to protect against internal or external threats to the United States. Thus, if an item, such as curtains for a DHS office, is not related to activities to protect the United States from internal or external national security threats, its procurement most likely would not be subject to the Kissell Amendment. Appendix A shows the differences between the Berry Amendment, the Kissell Amendment, and the Buy American Act. Sales to DOD in the four Berry-applicable product categories totaled $2.4 billion in FY2016 (see Figure 1 ). DOD expenditures on Berry Amendment products accounted for roughly 1% of the department's spending on products and services in FY2016, according to figures from the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG). One reason for the drop in spending on Berry-related products in recent years is the decrease in Armed Forces end strength. The number of active-duty personnel fell to 1.38 million in 2016 from 1.51 million in 2010, when the U.S. military was more actively engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there is a higher level of defense spending in coming years, this could result in increased DOD demand for Berry-applicable products. In FY2016, the Coast Guard and TSA combined accounted for more than $30 million in procurement obligations for Kissell items. Most of this amount involves uniforms. TSA provides 14 different uniform items to new hires. Under the Berry and Kissell Amendments, all covered textile and apparel items must be manufactured in the United States from domestic components. This has created niche markets for domestic producers. Figure 2 provides a graphic depiction of the textile and apparel production steps affected by these laws. DOD spent approximately $1.6 billion on Berry-compliant purchases of textiles and apparel in FY2016, and DHS purchases of apparel under the Kissell Amendment came to more than $30 million.