Poll: 63 percent want government to buy US goods, even at higher cost

Sixty-three percent of Americans want the government to buy goods made in the U.S., even if they cost more, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released Thursday.

The survey found that 62 percent of Americans think the government should only buy U.S.-made vaccines, though 53 percent think it is OK to buy personal protective equipment from foreign sources.

The poll comes a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shined a spotlight on the foreign dependences within America’s supply chain. As Reuters notes, hospitals early on struggled with shortages of gowns, gloves and masks for their staffs.

A few days after he took office in late January, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at strengthening rules that require federal agencies to purchase American-made products.

The poll found different points of view when it came how much respondents were willing to spend on American-made goods.

Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed said that an item being U.S.-made is at least somewhat important, though 37 percent said they would not pay extra for one.

Twenty-six percent said they would pay 5 percent more, and 21 percent said they would only pay 10 percent more.

Reuters noted that Americans’ opinions on how much they would spend on U.S.-made products have barely changed since it polled Americans in the early days of former President Trump’s administration four years ago.

The poll surveyed 1,005 adults on March 4 and 5. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

—Updated at 11:26 a.m.