Buy Foreign

President Eisenhower last week made it easier for businessmen abroad to compete with U.S. industrialists for contracts with the Government. By executive order, the President changed the way the Government will interpret the Buy American Act.

Formerly, Government agencies were virtually required to grant a contract to a U.S. bidder if his bid was no more than 25% above that of a foreign bidder. Although the Administration has already lowered this percentage informally, on occasion (TIME, Nov. 29), the new regulations officially set a new differential of less than 10%. Under the new order, a domestic bid can be thrown out in favor of a foreign company if 1) the domestic bid is more than 106% of the foreign delivered price (including tariff, freight in the U.S., etc.), or 2) exceeds the delivered-price foreign bid, plus 10% of the price before U.S. tariffs, freight, etc. are added. The effect of the 10% formula will be to give higher tariff products a better break.

To this new freer-trade policy President Eisenhower made one notable exception. All percentage rules can be disregarded if the U.S. supplier with the lowest bid can show that the contract would bring more jobs to an officially certified area of unemployment.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.