I have hand-manufactured a small sewing notion for 30 years. It is a perennial in its market and sells without any advertising or promotion in the past 20 years. One of my distributors has wholesale accounts in Canada, so every year, I must fill out a form verifying that all my raw materials are of US origin.
It isn’t a big deal in terms of time. The distributor sends me the form, I sign & return and that’s it. But no one has ever checked. To be honest, I have no way of knowing where my suppliers source their materials. For 23 years, I have assumed the very small American suppliers sell domestic materials and that is what I put on the form. No further verification ha ever been requested.
That is foolish.
There must be exceptions for small businesses.
It’s no problem at all for the big ones, but a barrier to new, small business- the ones we want to encourage (and political donors want to burden).