FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - TSA orders uniforms for $98 million?
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Old Apr 20, 2010 | 10:27 am
  #107  
tom911
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Join Date: Jun 2000
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Ran across this article from this last week dealing with a clothing manufacturer in Tennessee that was upset about TSA clothing being manufactured outside the U.S.A. because he thought terrorists could get access, as well as 300 jobs his company could provide if they were the manufacturer. Turns out it's a trade related issue concerning proper notifications to foreign countries that allows the clothing to be made outside the U.S.A,

By law, all U.S. military uniforms must be made in the United States.

Then, last year, a North Carolina congressman inserted an amendment -- the "Kissell Amendment" -- into the stimulus bill, mandating that all Homeland Security uniforms also must be made in the U.S.

The problem was that American trade reps never notified Canada, Mexico or Chile that the U.S. was exempting TSA items from its trade agreements with those countries. A spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative called that "an oversight."

So the Department of Homeland Security told vendors last summer -- just before new bids were submitted -- that it would allow TSA uniforms to be produced in those countries.
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12297925
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