Clauses · DFARS · Supply chain and sourcing · provision
DFARS 252.225-7020 Trade Agreements Certificate
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No subcontract paragraph — the text speaks only to 'the offeror' and to how the Government will evaluate offers, including a paragraph (b) about which offers the Government will consider. Neither of those has any meaning in a subcontract. Primes list it because the only way they can certify their own end product's country of origin is to get the same statement from whoever manufactures it; what belongs in your purchase order is a country-of-origin declaration and the substance of 252.225-7021, not this certificate
A clause can reach your subcontract without a mandate. Once it is in your document, it is a contract term all the same. The missing mandate is a fact about the regulation. It is not a ruling on your order.
Checked against acquisition.gov on 2026-08-05 · edition NOV 2014 (Basic and Alt I) · base v0.9.3 Read the text ↗
What it makes you produce
2 items for your checklist, slowest first.
Something somebody else has to issue you
The same day if the issuer is one of your own suppliers, months if it is an assessor or an underwriter.
The manufacturer's account of where substantial transformation happened for each line item, which a distributor's invoice does not carry — evidence behind the certificate rather than paper the provision names
DFARS 252.225-7020
Something you fill in and send back
Hours, once you know which one is missing.
The origin certificate, with any end product that is not U.S.-made, qualifying country, or designated country listed by line item and country
DFARS 252.225-7020(c)
When it is used
A solicitation provision. 225.1101(5): use the basic or the alternate of this provision instead of FAR 52.225-6 in solicitations — including solicitations using FAR part 12 procedures for commercial products and commercial services — that include the basic or Alternate II of the clause at 252.225-7021, Trade Agreements. Basic goes with the basic clause; Alternate I goes with Alternate II of the clause (225.1101(5)(i) and (5)(ii)). It carries no threshold of its own: the $174,000 WTO GPA threshold that puts 252.225-7021 in the document is what puts this provision there. And 225.1101(5) contains a rule most templates ignore — 'If the solicitation includes the provision at FAR 52.204-7, do not separately list the provision 252.225-7020 in the solicitation', because the annual representations in SAM already cover it.
Read closely
(c)(2) is the list itself. The certification is normally satisfied through the annual representations held in the Government's registration system, so a stale record there is the usual way a shop certifies something it did not intend. The certificate makes no promises about a shop's own suppliers and carries no domestic-content arithmetic — that sits in 252.225-7001.
Alternates
Alt I · NOV 2014
DFARS 225.1101(5) and (5)(ii) — use the Alternate I provision if the solicitation includes Alternate II of the clause at 252.225-7021, Trade Agreements.
Alt I widens the safe set to take in South Caucasus, Central and South Asian state end products and splits the listing at (c)(2) into those and other nondesignated ones. It moves which origins can be certified, not the certificate you fill in and sign or the manufacturer's evidence behind it.
The 4 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, DFARS 252.225-7020, 225.1101(5) and (6), and 212.301(f)(x)(N) (verified 2026-08-05)
This is research, not legal advice. It states what the regulation says about this clause and cites the paragraph behind it. It does not rule on your order, and it does not rule on whether a prime's markings are correct.