We ordinarily think advertising claims should be judged by how
consumers perceive them and not what politicians think they should
mean, but a recent bill passed in California threatens to do just
that and sow even more confusion into the use of "Made in
____" claims.
Manufacturing products in the United States is suddenly a trendy
topic, though as we often remind our clients and readers, the term
"Made in USA" is a highly regulated claim. The
FTC requires that companies only use the term when "all or
virtually all" of the manufacturing costs are domestic. While
the FTC permits qualified claims, such as assembled in the USA, it
also recently issued a closing letter in a case where a company was
improperly making such a claim for products that were imported into
the U.S. in a "partially finished state." And the NAD has
even gotten into the act, finding recently that a claim of "built
in the USA" was not the same as a claim of "Assembled in
the USA," but rather more
