Today, Sherrod Brown announced a new effort to “boost domestic apparel and textile manufacturing.” The current Buy America statute states that only 51% of apparel purchased by the federal government be made in America. Sherrod Brown’s new Wear American Act of 2012 would revise that law, and require that the federal government purchase only apparel that is 100% American made.

Brown said, “Manufacturing helped make this country great. Good-paying manufacturing jobs have allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to buy homes, send their children to college, and retire with security. But for too long, we’ve seen American manufacturing jobs—including textile and apparel jobs—shipped overseas due to unfair trade that has stacked the deck against American workers. We know how to make things in America, and the textile sector employs more than half a million workers in the United States—which is why the federal government should be purchasing, whenever possible, apparel that is domestically produced. With our widening trade deficit, we should be doing everything we can to support American manufacturing and job creation.”

This is not the first time Sherrod Brown has stood up for American manufacturing. Senator Brown has consistently fought to move the All-American Flag Act forward, which would require the federal government to purchase 100% made-in-America flags.