2023: What Is Purchased in America? 

Quantitative Measures of U.S. Manufactured Goods Purchases

In this report, economists from the Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs (OUSEA) provide new estimates for how much of what Americans buy are American-made goods. We use data from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to estimate the share of domestic content in gross domestic purchases of manufactured goods.  Gross domestic purchases include purchases of both imported and domestically-produced goods and services. Domestic content is estimated as gross domestic purchases less the value of imported final goods and services less the value of imported intermediate inputs embedded in goods manufactured by domestic firms.

We find that 52 percent of the value in gross domestic purchases reflected domestic content in 2023. In other words, about half of what Americans purchased in 2023 was “made in America.” Gross domestic purchases in the United States was $3.7 trillion in 2023 in nominal terms, meaning $1.9 trillion of that value can be attributed to U.S. industries. This includes all final purchases by U.S. consumers, businesses, and governments.

In a previous report¹ from OUSEA, “2022: What Is Made in America?” we estimate the domestic content of U.S. manufacturing gross output, which is gross output minus the value of all foreign-sourced inputs used throughout the supply chains of U.S. manufacturers. We found that 80 percent of the gross output generated by U.S. manufacturers in 2022 came from domestic content. But while a large portion of the value of goods that are produced in America is from domestic sources, this does not necessarily imply that the domestic content of the goods that Americans purchase is also high. 

Our estimates provide policy-relevant information about the extent to which the American market for manufactured goods is integrated with global supply chains. To some extent, the higher the foreign content share of manufactured goods, the more exposed the U.S. economy is to potential global supply chain disruptions. Moreover, the type of foreign content determines the way it affects the economy. When more foreign content is comprised of intermediate goods imports, domestic manufacturers rely more on global supply chains and so reduced access to foreign markets can hamper their ability to do business. If more foreign content is comprised of final goods imports, Americans are sourcing more goods from abroad and domestic manufacturers fulfill less of final good purchases. However, higher use of imported inputs could reflect firms choosing to purchase cheaper or domestically unavailable products from foreign sources. We also estimate domestic content shares by good type, allowing policymakers to observe these differences by industry. 

1. See Allison Derrick and William Hawk, 2022: What is Made in America? OUSEA Issue Brief (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs (OUSEA), DOC, July 22, 2024). https://www.commerce.gov/data-and-reports/reports/2024/07/2022-what-mad…