(CNN) — You might be surprised if you looked at a tag on an American flag bought by the military. It could easily read “Made in China.”
While the flags were made correctly with 13 stripes and 50 stars, representing the original 13 American colonies and the 50 U.S. states, there was no law that said flags bought by the Pentagon had to be made in the United States.
That is until this past Friday.
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson added a provision into the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last month that added the American flag to the list of items covered under the Berry Amendment, which requires that certain items that the military buys to be produced in America.
It went into effect last week.
“I am proud to have worked to pass this law so that our men and women in uniform never have to fight under a U.S. flag made overseas, and so that our Defense Department never again spends American tax dollars on a U.S. flag made overseas,” the California Democrat said.
The Berry Amendment, passed in 1941, restricts military funds from being used to buy certain items that are not grown or produced in the United States, including food, clothing, military uniforms, fabrics and certain tools.
The-CNN-Wire
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