Strengthening U.S. Manufacturing Through Public Procurement Policies: How Procurement Policies Can Promote Innovation and Good Jobs

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This study advances a policy framework capable of supporting a major revival of the United States manufacturing sector. We are especially focused on the prospects for greatly expanding good job opportunities for U.S. workers that would result through the revival of the U.S. manufacturing sector. We focus, further, on using one set of policy tools—U.S. public sector purchases of manufactured goods, or procurement policies—to promote growth and expanding job opportunities within one manufacturing industry, i.e. the production of railcar transportation equipment. We show how some significant, though still straightforward, reforms of the official U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) procurement program known as Buy America are capable of generating major benefits to domestic railcar manufacturers as well as to workers in this sector.