Clauses · FAR · Supply chain and sourcing
FAR 52.225-21 Required Use of American Iron, Steel, and Manufactured Goods-Buy American Statute-Construction Materials
Does the regulation require it to flow down?
No
The clause has four paragraphs — (a) Definitions, (b) Domestic preference, (c) Request for determination of inapplicability, (d) Data — and NO subcontracts paragraph; verified against the full text on 2026-08-05, and FAR 25.1102(e) imposes nothing on subcontracts. Primes flow it down because the domestic-material duty is only satisfiable through the supply chain that actually delivers the steel and the manufactured goods, and because construction flow-down schedules are maintained as omnibus lists rather than pruned clause by clause — which is precisely how a 2009 stimulus clause survives into a November 2024 template
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 Jan 2021 (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.
Origin evidence for the construction material from whoever made it — for manufactured material, where it was manufactured; for iron or steel, where it was produced
FAR 52.225-21
Something you write
Days to weeks, and nobody outside your company has to agree to it.
- FAR 52.225-21(c)
A request to the contracting officer for a determination that the restriction does not apply, carrying the market survey and the cost comparison table in the format (d) sets — each material with its unit, quantity and delivered cost, and the surveyed suppliers' names, contacts and responses
Owed when foreign construction material is needed, on unreasonable cost, on domestic nonavailability, or on the public interest; a request made after award has to explain why the need could not reasonably have been foreseen
When it is used
This is a Recovery Act clause, not the general construction Buy American clause. FAR 25.1102 opens: 'When using funds other than those appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. L. 111-5) (Recovery Act), follow the prescriptions in paragraphs (a) through (d) of this section. Otherwise, follow the prescription in paragraph (e).' Paragraph (e) is where 52.225-21 lives — it is substituted for 52.225-9 only on construction funded by Recovery Act appropriations, performed in the United States, valued under $6,683,000. The clause text says so itself: 'This clause implements—(i) Section 1605 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) (Pub. L. 111-5).' On a 2026 subcontract with no ARRA funding — which is every subcontract in this corpus — the clause's own funding condition is not met, so there is no Recovery Act work for it to reach. The general construction clause is 52.225-9 (or 52.225-11 at $6,683,000 and above).
Read closely
(b) is the domestic preference and it names no origin document, so what proves origin sits between you and the prime. The cost thresholds inside (c) are a differential above 25 percent for manufactured material and above 20 percent for unmanufactured. Everything on this row turns on Recovery Act funding being behind the project; without it, 52.225-9 and 52.225-11 are the clauses with different mechanics.
Source: acquisition.gov, FAR 52.225-21 (full paragraph structure), FAR 25.1102 (chapeau and paragraphs (a), (c), (e)), and FAR 25.402(b) (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.