The Berry Amendment (USC, Title 10, Section 2533a), requires the Department of Defense to give preference in procurement to domestically produced, manufactured, or home grown products, most notably food, clothing, fabrics, and specialty metals. Congress originally passed domestic source restrictions as part of the 1941 Fifth Supplemental DOD Appropriations Act in order to protect the domestic industrial base in the time of war. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) was amended to include exceptions for the acquisition of food, specialty metals, and hand or measuring tools when needed to support contingency operations or when the use of other-than-competitive procedures is based on an unusual and compelling urgency. The specialty metals provision was added in 1973. This provision requires that specialty metals incorporated in products delivered under DOD contracts to be melted in the United States or a “qualifying country”. Specialty metals include certain steel, titanium, zirconium and other metal alloys that are important to the DOD. On April 10, 2007 the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics determined that most compliant fasteners could not be obtained in sufficient quantity without unreasonably delaying production, and excepted most fasteners from the requirement [1]. Congress has since revised the Berry amendment in the Fiscal Year 2007 and Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Acts. The revised statute, 10 U.S.C. 2533b, now includes exemptions for certain Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) items, a de minimis exception for small amounts of non-domestic metal (excluding high-performance magnets), a market basket approach to measuring the amount of domestic metal content in articles delivered to DOD and a national security waiver to prevent the delay in delivery of critically needed systems to troops in combat. Additionally, the blanket exemption for fasteners was removed by Congress, now requiring that at least 50% of commercial fastener specialty metal content be domestic. Finally, Congress required that all waivers or Domestic Non-Availability Determinations (DNADs) be reviewed and revised to comply with the amended law [2]. The original "Berry Amendment," 10 U.S.C. 2533a now excludes specialty metals and applies generally to textile materials [3]. All About Berry A Backgrounder on the Berry Amendment On the eve of World War II the government enacted the National Defense Appropriations Act, which included a number of "Buy American" restrictions on Department of Defense (DoD) purchases. The government wanted to ensure that U.S. troops wore military uniforms wholly produced within the United States and were fed with food products solely produced here. In 1952 South Dakota Congressman E.Y. Berry introduced an amendment to DoD's procurement restrictions that expanded the coverage to include fabrics (including ballistic fibers), specialty metals, and hand or measuring tools. The specialty metal provision required that metals such as stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, nickel and cobalt be smelted in the United States or in one of 19 other "qualifying" countries (see sidebar "Who's In?"). In 1972, then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird issued a memo detailing how the Berry Amendment should be implemented. Laird determined that it would be "impractical" to try to enforce the amendment throughout all tiers of the supply chain, and that trying to do so would require "enormous expense in both time and money." Based on this memo, the DoD has enforced compliance to the amendment primarily within the first and second tiers of the supply chain. This changed in 2005, when the DoD broke from the policy and began requiring 100 percent compliance throughout the entire supply chain. The Berry Amendment Reform Coalition, which includes NEDA, SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association), AIA (Aerospace Industries Association), and EIA (Electronic Industries Alliance), has been lobbying the Senate and House of Representatives to include in the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act reforms that would ease the burden of compliance while still maintaining vital national defense interests. The proposals would modify the application and interpretation of the Berry Amendment to exclude purchases under $2,500 and would call for the department to review its policies with respect to the specialty metals provision in a manner that provides needed flexibility in the acquisition of major weapons systems, according to John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, and member of the Berry Amendment Reform Coalition. The Senate is in favor of the reforms, but others, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), are seeking to add several provisions to the bill to further strengthen the Berry amendment.