Clauses · FAR · Supply chain and sourcing · provision
FAR 52.225-2 Buy American Certificate
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
No regulatory flow-down mandate exists — a certificate is a representation made by an offeror to the Government, and FAR 25.1101(a)(2) reaches solicitations only. Primes push it down anyway because their own certificate is arithmetic on components they did not make: the prime cannot certify a domestic end product without knowing the country of origin and component cost of everything a sub ships it. In practice the prime re-papers the certificate as a supplier origin declaration
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 Oct 2022 (no alternates; page shows FAC 2026-01, effective 2026-03-13) · 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.
Country-of-origin and component-cost statements from your suppliers, because the percentage being certified is arithmetic over components somebody else made
FAR 52.225-2
Something you fill in and send back
Hours, once you know which one is missing.
The certification, signed, with every foreign end product listed by line item number and country of origin on the schedule under it
FAR 52.225-2(a)
When it is used
Solicitation-stage provision only. FAR 25.1101(a)(2): insert 52.225-2 in solicitations that contain the clause at 52.225-1, Buy American—Supplies. 52.225-1 itself is prescribed at 25.1101(a)(1) for acquisitions above the micro-purchase threshold ($15k) up to $50,000, and above $50,000 when neither the 52.225-3 band ($50,000 to under $174,000) nor the 52.225-5 band ($174,000 and up) applies — supplies, or services involving the furnishing of supplies, for use inside the United States. It does not apply when the solicitation is already restricted to domestic end products under subpart 6.3, when a 25.103 exception applies, or when the supplies are for use outside the US. For DoD, DFARS 225.1101 directs 'Use the basic or the alternate of the provision at 252.225-7000, Buy American—Balance of Payments Program Certificate, instead of the provision at FAR 52.225-2' — which is exactly what the three GDMS templates in the corpus say ('replaces FAR 52.225-2').
Read closely
(a) carries the certification itself, (b) is the listing, and (c) is where a domestic end product containing a critical component is named separately. For a US-manufactured product that misses the threshold there is a further question of whether it exceeds 55 percent domestic content — the fallback that lets the Government evaluate it as domestic, and it runs out on 2030-01-01. Where the percentage is unknown the provision's own instruction is to answer no.
The 3 templates that name it, with the line
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.225-2, FAR 25.1101(a), FAR 25.101, FAR 25.103, FAR 25.106, FAR 52.212-5(b)(48), and DFARS 225.1101 (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.