Soldiers carry them into battle, fly them high over foreign bases, and triumphantly1 carry them in processions, but those stars and stripes, until now, have often been made in China.
美军士兵们不仅扛着国旗战斗，这些国旗还高悬在美军驻海外军事基地上，放在凯旋美军的行囊里，然而这些美国星条旗却常常是由中国制造。
That
irony2 spurred North Bay
Congressman3 Mike Thompson (D) to write legislation requiring flags purchased by the Department of
Defense4 (DoD) be 100 percent "Made in America." That legislation is now law, signed as part of the 2014 omnibus
appropriations5 bill.
"I thought it was
appalling6 our Department of Defense would have flags made in other countries," Thompson said. "But it's also important because we need to be making more in America."
While the military flag rule passed, a similar bill requiring all government-purchased flags be made in the US has repeatedly failed. The change isn't cheap. Chinese-made flags cost significantly less than all-American ones.
The new requirements apply the existing Berry
Amendment7 passed in 1941 to flags. That amendment bans the Defense Department from buying food, clothing, military uniforms,
fabrics8,
stainless9 steel, and hand or measuring tools that are not grown or produced in the United States, except in rare exceptions.
"I am proud to have worked to pass this law so that our men and women in uniform never have to fight under a US flag made overseas, and so that our Defense Department never again spends American tax dollars on a US flag made overseas," said the Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart
recipient10.
Thompson toured North Bay Industries on Tuesday. The Rohnert Park company makes thousands of flags each year, mainly for the Department of Veteran Affairs, which was already required to source memorial flags made in the United States with American-only materials.
Thompson had visited the Rohnert Park facility last year and found out that not all flags purchased by the military were being made in the US, which he said prompted the need for the legislation.
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