There's a federal crackdown on fake "Made in USA" labels. Here's how we're responding.
A quick note on where federal enforcement is headed and what we're doing about it.
Back in March, the White House signed an executive order directing the FTC to prioritize going after false "Made in USA" claims. It doesn't change the law (the FTC's Made in USA rule has been in place since 2021), but it puts real enforcement behind it, and it specifically calls out online marketplaces that don't verify origin claims. The FTC has already been acting on it.
The good news for us: every business on One Bison is reviewed by a real person on our team before it goes live. Our American-made label works at the company level, so every one of a company's products has to be made in the USA, not just some. In practice, we confirm the company's website and product labeling back up the claim, and anything ambiguous, like "assembled in the USA," doesn't earn the badge. That rules out partial cases: New Balance, for example, makes some shoes here but not all, so they wouldn't qualify.
Where we want to do better is the product level. If a company claims made in the USA and the FTC accepts that claim, checking it at the company level is close to what the government already does. As we move toward letting people buy directly, we'll need to verify product by product, and I'm working through how, maybe companies signing attestations on where each part is made, maybe something else. Open to ideas.
We're also doing a deeper pass on every American-made listing right now, re-checking each one against our standard and building tools to help the team catch anything worth a second look.
When you see American-made on One Bison, we want it to mean exactly what you think it means.