{"id":385,"date":"2021-02-28T14:28:48","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T21:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/?p=385"},"modified":"2021-02-28T14:30:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-28T21:30:32","slug":"ftcs-crackdown-on-abuse-of-made-in-usa-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/ftcs-crackdown-on-abuse-of-made-in-usa-labels\/","title":{"rendered":"FTC’s Crackdown on Abuse of “Made in USA” Labels"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By BethEl Nager<\/em><\/strong>
Law Student Editor<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Federal Trade Commission<\/a> (FTC) is the U.S. agency tasked with protecting consumers and enforcing certain antitrust laws. Recently, the FTC has brought a claim of exceptional magnitude against a company accused of violating its \u201cMade in USA\u201d standards, set forth in its Enforcement Policy Statement on U.S. Origin claims<\/a>. This standard requires that \u201call or virtually all<\/a>\u201d<\/u> of the products be made in the United States in order to use this (or similar) phrasing or logos on a product or packaging label. All items sold and marketed in the USA must comply with the labeling requirements.<\/p>

Chemence Inc., a glue producer, labeled its product as \u201cMade in USA\u201d and depicted an American flag on the packaging. Chemences\u2019 glue was not made \u201call or virtually all\u201d in the United States, per the FTC requirement. The manufacturer made its glue in the United States from components sourced from other countries, which were not identified on the label. Additionally, Chemence provided its distributors with deceptive promotional materials maintaining the \u201cMade in USA\u201d fa\u00e7ade.\u00a0 This issue became especially problematic because Chemence was selling its product to unrelated companies<\/a> to be marketed under other trademarks, and which also were represented as \u201cMade in the USA.\u201d<\/p>

In 2016, the FTC filed a complaint against Chemence and other glue manufacturers due to the misuse of the \u201cMade in USA\u201d label.\u00a0 Initially, Chemence was fined $220,000 and was required to show<\/a> the products were finalized in the US, most of the processing occurred in the US, and \u201call or virtually all\u201d of the components were from the United States. If Chemence could not prove these elements, it was forbidden to display \u201cMade in USA\u201d on the packaging.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

The FTC filed a new complaint<\/a> in 2020 against James Cooke, the president of Chemence, and the company itself. Cooke was accused of falsely reporting that Chemence complied with the 2016 relabeling requirement. The FTC claimed Chemence continued to label the glue with \u201cMade in USA\u201d and used foreign-sourced chemicals, without qualifying language.<\/p>

After the 2020 complaint, the FTC, Chemence, and Cooke agreed on a settlement<\/a>. In it, the parties agree that Chemence will submit annual reports to the FTC detailing its compliance with the \u201cMade in USA\u201d regulation, and it will explain to its distributors that its products contain foreign-sourced chemicals. Most importantly, the settlement includes a monetary penalty of $1.2 million, \u201cthe highest settlement amount<\/a> ever paid in a \u201cMade in USA\u201d case.<\/p>

Other companies will likely take the Chemence case as a strong warning of the FTC\u2019s seriousness about enforcing the \u201cMade in USA\u201d policy.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By BethEl NagerLaw Student Editor The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the U.S. agency tasked with protecting consumers and enforcing certain antitrust laws. Recently, the FTC has brought a claim of exceptional magnitude against a company accused of violating its \u201cMade in USA\u201d standards, set forth in its Enforcement Policy Statement on U.S. Origin claims. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,6],"tags":[22,19,20,18,21],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com\/ibt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}